Patent ID: 8923246

Claim:
A method for managing a radio resource control state of a user equipment comprising a wireless wide area network (WWAN) radio and a wireless local area network (WLAN) radio, the method comprising: determining when i) the user equipment via the WWAN radio has an established connection with a wireless wide area network in a dedicated control channel state, the dedicated control channel state comprising at least one dedicated uplink and at least one dedicated downlink channel allocated for communication between the user equipment and the wireless wide area network, and when ii) the user equipment has an established connection with a wireless local area network via the WLAN radio, whether a number of triggering conditions associated with the connection between the user equipment and the wireless local area network are satisfied; determining a size of a data packet that is sufficient to keep the radio resource control state in a dedicated control channel state; and responsive to satisfying the number of triggering conditions, initiating a sustain message, wherein initiating the sustain message comprises sending the sustain message over the wireless wide area network via the WWAN radio, wherein a size of the sustain message is the size of the data packet, and wherein sending the sustain message over the wireless wide area network prevents a Radio Network Controller (RNC) of the wireless wide area network from transitioning the connection between the user equipment and the wireless wide area network from the dedicated control channel state to a connection state without any dedicated communication channels allocated for communication between the user equipment and the wireless wide area network.