Patent ID: 8509773

Claim:
A connection method for use by a vehicle telematics unit to establish a wireless telephone connection between the telematics unit and a call center, comprising the steps of: (a) maintaining at a vehicle a list of wireless carrier systems to which the vehicle telematics unit has previously connected; (b) selecting a call type from among a plurality of different potential call types based on whether a manual input or an automatic input is received; (c) accessing the list in response to failure of a first connection attempt with a call center via an attached base station of a registered PLMN using the selected call type; and (d) iteratively carrying out the following steps until the connection has successfully been established or a failed connection attempt has been carried out for all carrier systems on the list: (d1) reselecting the next carrier system on the list and determining if the reselected carrier system is the same as the registered PLMN and, if not, then continuing with the iteration of steps (d2) through (d4) and, if so, then reselecting the next PLMN before continuing with the iteration of steps (d2) through (d4); (d2) selecting a base station within the reselected carrier system; (d3) attempting to attach to the selected base station and, if unsuccessful, attempting to attach to each of a number of neighboring base stations identified by the selected base station and, if successfully attached one of the base stations, then (d4) attempting to originate a connection with the call center using the attached base station.