Patent ID: 8121090

Claim:
A method of operating a mobile communication device comprising: wirelessly transferring user communications to a first wireless base station; identifying a second wireless base station that has sufficient performance characteristics for wireless communication with the mobile communication device and that has a higher communication priority than the first wireless base station, and in response, initiating a hand-off from the first wireless base station to the second wireless base station; and in response to the hand-off, stopping the wireless transfer of the user communications to the first wireless base station and wirelessly transferring additional user communications to the second wireless base station, wherein identifying the second wireless base station having the higher communication priority comprises wirelessly receiving a base station list and processing the base station list to determine that the second wireless base station has the higher communication priority than the first wireless base station, and the base station list indicates a plurality of prioritized base station groups, wherein the first wireless base station is in a first one of the prioritized base station groups, wherein the second wireless base station is in a second one of the prioritized base station groups, and wherein the second one of the prioritized base station groups has the higher communication priority than the first one of the prioritized base station groups.