Patent ID: 7949354

Claim:
A method of operating a radio access network for facilitating transmission of a Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service to plural user equipment units served by a radio base station, the method comprising: (1) including in a first message of a Common Transport Channel Setup procedure from a radio network controller node to the radio base station an indication that sharing of a common transport bearer involved in a session of the Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service is allowed; (2) making a determination, at the radio base station and in dependence upon internal structure of the radio base station, whether or not to share the common transport bearer and to share, over the common transport bearer, data for a Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Service session among user equipment units situated in plural cells served by the radio base station; and, if the determination of act (2) is positive, (3) including in a second message of the Common Transport Channel Setup procedure sent from the radio base station to the radio network controller an identification of an already-established channel to be used as the shared common transport bearer.