Patent ID: 7986678

Claim:
A wireless communication system comprising: a plurality of mobile devices; a local area network; a plurality of local base stations coupled to the local area network, each local base station having a unique address on the local area network and configured to transmit and receive data packets to and from the mobile devices and to transfer the data packets between local base stations over the local area network using the unique address; a subscription server operating on the local area network and configured to store data identifying the unique address of the local base station covering each of the mobile devices; and a redirection software module operating on the local area network and having access to a wide-area wireless network, and configured to send and receive data packets over the wide-area wireless network to and from mobile devices that are not within range of any of the local base stations; the subscription server further configured to: receive a request from one of the local base stations for a routing address of a mobile devices that is a destination of a data packet, the routing address being the unique address of the base station covering the mobile device; if the subscription server does not have stored the routing address of the destination mobile device, then the subscription server calculates both the time elapsed since the destination mobile device has last been contacted and the number of failed attempts to locate destination mobile device; if a pre-set time interval has elapsed since the destination mobile device has last been successfully contacted or if a pre-set number of failed attempts to contact the destination mobile device has been exceeded, then the subscription server delivers the data packet to the redirection software module; and the redirection software module further configured to receive the data packet from the subscription server and to route the data packet to an electronic mailbox associated with the destination mobile device.