Patent ID: 7065321

Claim:
A method of providing digital data to a data reception device, comprising: (a) operating the data reception device in a wireless communication network comprising a plurality of terrestrial receivers and terrestrial transmitters, each serving a service region, (b) receiving at least a portion of the digital data in a satellite receiver via a satellite communication system; (c) providing the received portion of the digital data to at least one of the terrestrial transmitters; and (d) transmitting the received portion of the digital data to the data reception device within the service region using the terrestrial transmitter while transmitting a remainder of the digital data via the wireless communication network; (e) determining if a transmission requirement of the digital data exceeds a capacity of the wireless communication network; and (f) performing steps comprising steps (b)through (d) only if the transmission requirements of the digital data exceed the capacity of the wireless communication network.