Patent ID: 7289484

Claim:
A method of call processing for a mobile station that is able to operate in plural bands in a wireless network having an inband base station tranceiver (BTS) operating on an inband carrier, and one or more outband BTSes operating on respective one or more outband carriers, the method of comprising: comparing a quality measure of the inband carrier to a quality measure of a representative outband carrier of the one or more outband carriers; determining, based on comparing the quality measures, whether the representative outband carrier is better than the inband carrier; in response to determining that the representative outband carrier is better than the inband carrier, initiating a migration of the mobile station from the inband carrier to one of the one or more outband carriers; and determining the quality measures for the inband and outband carriers, wherein each quality measure includes a corresponding data word comprising: a non-downgraded bit; a spare capacity bit; and a retain carrier bit.