A method and
system for activating a terminal are provided by the present invention. The method includes: when the situation of triggering a
Machine Type Communication (MTC) terminal (1) offline occurs, a
Mobility Management Entity (MME) (3) sends the identity of the MTC terminal (1) to an MTC
server (6) or an intermediate
network element, before deleting or marking invalid the context information of the MTC terminal (1); the MTC
server (6) or the intermediate
network element receives and stores the identity of the MTC terminal (1); when the MTC
server (6) needs to activate the MTC terminal (1), the MTC server (6) sends, directly or via the intermediate
network element, the offline activation message carrying the identity of the MTC terminal (1) to the MME (3); the MME (3) receives the offline activation message and initiates
paging the MTC terminal (1) according to the identity of the MTC terminal (1); the MTC terminal (1) stores the received
paging identity under the offline situation, and monitors the broadcast channel of the
cell which it is located in, thus responding to the
paging and realizing offline activation.