Patent ID: 8189583

Claim:
A method of operating a first peer base station to facilitate fast group communication between subscriber devices in a peer-to-peer wide area network of a plurality of peer base stations, wherein each of the subscriber devices is affiliated to one of a plurality of talkgroups and registered to at least one peer base station within the peer-to-peer wide area network, the method comprising: the first peer base station exchanging messages with one or more other peer base stations in the plurality to determine which ones of the other peer base stations, are still actively serving one or more subscriber devices that are members of a same particular talkgroup of the plurality of talkgroups as particular talkgroups with which active subscriber devices registered with the first peer base station are members of, and for each particular talkgroup, storing a mapping identifying which ones of the other peer base stations are actively serving subscriber devices associated with the particular talkgroup; the first peer base station receiving a first media intended for a first one of the particular talkgroups from a first one of the subscribe devices registered with the first peer base station; the first peer base station duplicating the media intended for the first one of the particular talkgroups; and the first peer base station unicasting the duplicated media to each of the one or more other peer base stations, as a function of the stored mapping, that are listed as actively serving subscriber devices associated with the first one of the particular talkgroups to enable the one or more of the other peer base stations to further deliver the duplicated media to their respectively registered subscriber devices associated with the first one of the particular talkgroups.