Patent ID: 7792530

Claim:
A method of facilitating use of a restricted base transceiver station, comprising: providing to a first set of subscribers associated with a mobile network operator access to a mobile network via base transceiver stations associated with a first mobile network identifier code (“MNC”) associated with the mobile network operator, but not via restricted base transceiver stations associated with a second MNC associated with the mobile network operator; and providing to each of a second set of subscribers associated with the mobile network operator access to the mobile network via a corresponding subset of a set of restricted base transceiver stations associated with the second MNC, the coverage area of at least one of the restricted base transceiver stations is completely with the coverage area of one of the base transceiver stations associated with the first MNC, the subset including, for each subscriber in the second set, one or more restricted base transceiver stations with respect to which that subscriber is an authorized user, wherein mobile stations associated with the second set of subscribers are configured with a primary network identifier that matches the second MNC and the primary network identifier identifies said mobile stations associated with the second set of subscribers as being associated with members of said second set of subscribers, wherein the mobile stations associated with the second set of subscribers provide access to the mobile network via at least the base stations associated with the first MNC and the subset of the restricted base transceiver stations, wherein the base transceiver stations associated with the first MNC are macrocellular base transceiver stations and the restricted base transceiver stations are not macrocellular base transceiver stations, wherein, if one of the restricted base transceiver stations receives a location update request from one of the mobile stations associated with the first set of subscribers, then the location update request is sent to a mobile switching center where the location update request is refused, wherein the restricted base transceiver stations are coupled to an aggregated gateway through an IP network, wherein the aggregated gateway is connected to a shared base station controller through a respective dedicated link, and wherein the base transceiver stations associated with the first MNC and the aggregated gateway each has a respective dedicated communication link to the shared base station controller.