Patent ID: 7958542

Claim:
A method for counting user equipment units capable of decoding contents of a multimedia broadcast/multicast service (MBMS), wherein each user equipment unit has an identifier, wherein the user equipment units are located within a radio cell of a mobile radio telecommunication network, said method comprising the steps of: providing at least one processor for performing the steps of: determining for each of the user equipment units during the activation of the service whether to join the service; providing each of the user equipment units who are determined to join the service with a key during the activation of the service; broadcasting an announcement message in the radio cell; transmitting first tokens from the user equipment units to the mobile radio telecommunication network, the first tokens generated based on an algorithm derived from one or more of the following variables: a random number, an auxiliary number, a service identifier, and the key; matching the first tokens to second tokens in the mobile radio telecommunication network; and counting pairs of corresponding first and second tokens; wherein the radio cell informs a central radio network controller (CRNC) of a status of all the user equipment units that are in a connected mode or in an idle mode that have already joined the MBMS service and intend to receive the contents of the service and the CRNC only counts each one of those user equipment units as one disregarding at least one message sent by a single non-intended user equipment in order to select either point-to-point or point-to-multipoint communication channels for transmission.