Patent ID: 8244205

Claim:
A method of reestablishing a radio resource control (RRC) connection, the method performed by a wireless mobile device configured to communicate wirelessly with a Long Term Evolution (LTE) or a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) network employing a wireless communications protocol, the wireless mobile device comprising a processor, a radio, and a memory, the method comprising: establishing an RRC connection with a first acceptable cell of an LTE or UMTS network, wherein the first acceptable cell supports emergency calls; establishing an emergency call via the RRC connection; detecting a failure condition in the RRC connection, wherein the failure condition is one of a radio link failure, a handover failure, a mobility from Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) failure, an integrity check failure, or an RRC connection reconfiguration failure; searching for a second acceptable cell that is identified as able to support emergency calls and that belongs to a PLMN that the first acceptable cell also belongs to; when a second acceptable cell is detected that is identified as able to support emergency calls and that belongs to a PLMN that the first acceptable cell also belongs to: sending a request to the second acceptable cell to reestablish the RRC connection even when a suitable cell is detected, wherein the second acceptable cell is either the first acceptable cell or another acceptable cell, and when a second acceptable cell that is identified as able to support emergency calls and that belongs to a PLMN that the first acceptable cell also belongs to is not detected but a suitable cell is detected: entering an RRC_IDLE mode, and sending a request to the suitable cell to establish a second RRC connection with the suitable cell.