Patent ID: 7006826

Claim:
A method of informing mobile user terminals camped on a cell of a base station of a radio telecommunications network that a service is unavailable such that a mobile user terminal desirous of the service is handed over to another cell for providing the service, the network comprising a circuit-switched system providing circuit-switched services and a packet-switched system providing packet-switched services, the method comprising: informing the user terminals that selectably at least one of the circuit-switched system and the packet-switched system are unavailable, wherein the step of informing comprises informing the terminals in a message on a downlink broadcast channel, wherein the message comprises an information element selectably representative of any of the following states: an unbarred state, all circuit-switched services barred state, all circuit-switched services barred state, and both all circuit-switched services barred and all circuit-switched services barred state wherein the telecommunications network comprises a wideband-code division multiple access W-CDMA network, and the terminals being informed in a system information broadcast SIB message sent on the broadcast channel.