Patent ID: 7706788

Claim:
A method for giving to at least one user access to a respective home operator over a communication network, said access being via an access network and through any of a plurality of supported visited networks, wherein at least one of said supported visited networks comprises a proxy/relay agent for those authentication requests that must be forwarded towards an identified operator and a redirect agent for those authentication requests that have an unknown realm, whereby said at least one user is given the possibility of selecting one of said supported visited networks as the path for reaching said respective home operator, the method further comprising: receiving from said at least one user, user credentials at said access network, wherein the user credentials comprise a realm-identification component; forwarding said user credentials to an authentication function at said access network; and searching in a routing table for a realm identified by the realm-identification component, wherein when the realm is not included in the routing table, further performing the steps of: simultaneously redirecting to all said supported visited networks the user credentials whose realm-identification component does not correspond to any realm identified in the routing table; returning from said supported visited networks to said access network redirect notifications as well as contact information to said user's respective home operator; retrieving a set of available roaming networks for said at least one user, thus retrieving a list of operators holding a roaming agreement with said respective home operator of said at least one user; forwarding said list to said at least one user; receiving from said at least one user at said authentication function an identifier of an operator selected from said list; and forwarding to the operator identified by said identifier a user's authentication request.