A system and method for identifying the accessibility of femto base stations in a communication system. The system and method includes a plurality of macro base stations, open-access femto base stations and femto base stations with different subscriber groups. At least one of the base stations includes a transmitter configured to apply a base station identifier, such as a closed subscription group identifier, as a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) mask to XOR (exclusive OR) the CRC of a broadcast channel communication or an input to generate a scrambling sequence to the broadcast channel communication.