Patent ID: 7826842

Claim:
A wireless user equipment (UE) device, comprising: a communication subsystem that includes transceiver functionality for effectuating multi-mode scanning and communications over a plurality of bands; a component configured to discover at least one network and to determine an identification code combination associated with said at least one network, the identification code combination comprising a geographic designation and at least one of an access network identification code and a core network identification code; a component configured to determine an encoded selection control code associated with said identification code combination, said encoded selection control code being selected from a plurality of network selection control codes; and a component configured to apply a particular selection criterion for modulating selection behavior with respect to said at least one network in dependence on said encoded selection control code, wherein at least one of said encoded network selection control codes is associated with a selection criterion which forbids a user of said wireless device from removing a network from a list of forbidden networks during manual network selection, said list being provisioned by a home network operator of said wireless device.