A paging indicator deciding method of a mobile communication terminal in which a threshold value for deciding a paging indicator is variably set according to a SNR of a pilot channel. If the SNR of the pilot channel is in a range that a false alarm rate (FAR) has a large value, the mobile terminal determines a threshold value so that it can have the greatest value in a range that a miss probability (MP) does not exceed the standard value. If the SNR of the pilot channel is not in the range that the SNR has the large value, the mobile terminal determines a threshold value to obtain the smallest MP in a range that the FAR is not further increased.