Patent ID: 7486635

Claim:
A network service information providing system in a communications system which contains a mixture of narrow-area wireless communications systems for providing wireless communications service to designated areas and wide-area wireless communications systems for providing wireless communications service to areas wider than said designated areas and which includes terminals capable of connecting at least to said wide-area wireless communications systems, comprising: network service information detecting means which possesses information about each of said narrow-area wireless communications systems and which provides information about service areas of said narrow-area wireless communications systems as network service information to said terminals in response to requests from said terminals via said wide-area wireless communications systems, wherein: at least one of said narrow-area wireless communications systems comprises hot spot wireless communications systems connected to a trunk network to which said wide-area wireless communications systems are also connected, and ad hoc wireless communications systems which are not connected to said trunk network and are formed temporarily of only terminals; and each of said requests comprises a request to connect to one of said ad hoc wireless communications systems or one of said hot spot wireless communications systems, and a construction request to newly construct another of said ad hoc wireless communications systems.