A wireless communication system implements wireless communications between a base station and a plurality of User Equipments (UEs) including paging of UEs by initially processing paging indicator information. A first embodiment involves a UE's physical layer L1 being configured for interpreting a paging indicator (PI) to activate a preset decoding configuration to process paging data in a pre-specified paging channel (PCH). A second embodiment involves the physical layer control of a next higher level, L2, interpreting the paging indicator and configuring the physical layer L1 to process paging data in a pre-specified PCH.