Patent ID: 8050673

Claim:
A connection method for use by a vehicle telematics unit to establish a wireless telephone connection between the telematics unit and a call center, comprising the steps of: (a) verifying that the vehicle telematics unit is in communication with an attached base station; (b) attempting to originate a connection with the call center using the attached base station; and (c) if the origination attempt fails, then the method further comprises the steps of: (c1) identifying a neighboring base station using a base station list received from the attached base station; (c2) attempting to attach to the identified base station and, if successful, attempting to originate the connection with the call center over the identified base station; and (c3) iteratively repeating steps (c1) and (c2) until either a successful origination occurs or steps (c1) and (c2) have been carried out for each neighboring base station on the base station list.