Patent ID: 6873850

Claim:
A geographical information system comprising: a network server communicatively coupled to a base station node of a cellular communications network that supports wireless packet data connectivity; a local broadcast domain entity, said local broadcast entity comprising a wireless local area packet network station with a coverage area substantially smaller than the coverage area of said base station, said local broadcast domain entity operative to communicate with one or more user mobile devices using a low power wireless data channel, said local broadcast domain entity further operative to broadcast a sequence of low power data packets onto said channel, wherein at least one of said broadcast packets has a set of destination address information encoded as an indication of one or more information classes, wherein said one or more information classes relates to content carried in said at least one packet, such that said one or more user mobile devices can selectively receive said at least one of said broadcast packets by comparing said indication to a content-selective parameter, and said broadcast domain entity is further operative to receive from a mobile user device a user-interest packet; wherein said broadcast domain entity couples said user-interest packet to said network server, said network server performs a database search to find information qualified by information contained in the user-interest packet and the locality of the local broadcast domain, and the network server couples the results of the search to the mobile user device.