A method of operating a radio communications system, a radio communication system and a secondary station for use in the system

In a TDMA cordless telephone system, such as DECT, an out of lock secondary station scans all the physical channels in the respective carrier channels in order to find a system onto which it can lock. In order to expedite the scanning of the channels, the secondary station adopts a scanning sequence in which during each scan of the sequence consecutive physical channels located in non-adjacent carrier channels are scanned. Because of spill over from transmissions in the non-scanned channels it is possible to determine in what channels there are transmissions thereby possibly enabling the secondary channel to lock sooner thus saving battery power. In a modification of the scan, the signal strength in the respective physical channels may be monitored for a fraction of the duration of the physical channel.