Patent ID: 6912389

Claim:
An interworking and interoperability function for use in joining a GPRS wireless system with a second wireless system of a different technology family comprising: a first GPRS HLR emulation component adapted for connection to said GPRS wireless systems, said first GPRS HLR emulation component providing a GPRS HLR interface to a mobile station instead or an HLR in the GPRS system, the mobile station having wireless communications supplied by the second wireless system and having a home GPRS registration; a second MSC/VLR emulation component adapted for connection to an HLR node of said second wireless system that utilizes a technology family being one of analog cellular, time division multiple access cellular, and code division multiple access cellular; a message translation component operatively connected to said first and second emulation components and adapted to translate messages received at one of said emulation components into a form compatible with the other of said emulation components, the message translation component translating a first HLR service request from the mobile station that is of a form compatible with the first wireless system into a second HLR service request that is of a form compatible with the second wireless system; the second MSC/VLR emulation component transmitting the second HLR service request to an HLR component of the second wireless system for servicing the second request.