Patent ID: 7149521

Claim:
A method of managing mobility of a mobile station across an 802.xx wireless local area network (WLAN) and a wireless wide area network (WWAN) in which a mobile switching center (MSC) has been provisioned to act as a serving MSC for the WLAN, comprising: (a) the mobile station detecting the RF energy of the WLAN and validating its ability to be a member of the WLAN; (b) in response to step (a), the mobile station issuing a registration request to the serving MSC for the WLAN; (c) in response to step (b), the serving MSC for the WLAN causing the WWAN to recognize that the mobile station is registered with the serving MSC for the WLAN and that the mobile station is no longer served by a prior MSC; (d) the mobile station communicating to entities outside of the WLAN by communicating with the WLAN via a WLAN protocol and the WLAN communicating with the WWAN via the serving MSC for the WLAN.