A method for access control in a wireless network having a base station and a plurality of remote hosts includes the optional abilities of making dynamic adjustments of the uplink/downlink transmission ratio, making dynamic adjustments of the total number of reservation minislots, and assigning access priorities by message content type within a single user message stream. The method of the invention further provides for remote wireless host paging and for delayed release of active channels by certain high priority users in order to provide low latency of real-time packets by avoiding the need for repeated channel setup signaling messages. In the preferred embodiment, there are N minislots available for contention in the next uplink frame organized into a plurality of access priority classes. The base station allows m access priority classes. Each remote host of access priority class i randomly picks one contention minislot and transmits an access request, the contention minislot picked being in a range from 1 to N.sub.i where N.sub.(i+1)