Patent ID: 8559909

Claim:
A method for a User Equipment (UE) to support emergency communications with a Radio Access Network (RAN) serving at least one Core Network (CN), the method comprising: receiving an emergency call support indication from the RAN indicating whether emergency communications are supported or not in at least one CN in a shared network environment; determining whether emergency communications are supported in any of the at least one CN in the shared network environment based on the received emergency call support indication; determining whether emergency communications need to be established; when it is determined that emergency communications are supported in any of the at least one CN of the shared network environment and also when it is determined that emergency communications need to be established, transmitting a request for emergency communications to the RAN; and when the UE is connected via the RAN to a CN that does not support emergency communications and when emergency communications need to be established, terminating the connection via the RAN to the CN that does not support emergency communications and then transmitting a request for emergency communications to the RAN.