Patent ID: 7925212

Claim:
A method of connecting a Bluetooth device to a wide area network, comprising: manually pairing a first Bluetooth device and a second Bluetooth device using Bluetooth communications, the second Bluetooth device being operatively coupled to the wide area network, wherein the first Bluetooth device is a Bluetooth-enabled cellular phone; designating communication configuration parameters for use by the first Bluetooth device in connecting to the wide area network through the second Bluetooth device, wherein said first Bluetooth device sets up the second Bluetooth device for wide area network access, and wherein the first Bluetooth device configures itself to use communications facilities of the second Bluetooth device; using the Bluetooth communications to determine when the first Bluetooth device is in proximity with the second Bluetooth device; switching from the Bluetooth communications to 802.11 communications in communicating with the second Bluetooth device after it is determined, using the Bluetooth communications, that the first Bluetooth device is in proximity with the second Bluetooth device, the switching including automatically configuring the first Bluetooth device and the second Bluetooth device to set up a network connection between the first Bluetooth device and the wide area network through the second Bluetooth device in which the first Bluetooth device and the second Bluetooth device communicate with each other using 802.11 communications; and pairing the first Bluetooth device with a plurality of the second Bluetooth devices, wherein the Bluetooth-enabled cellular phone connects to the network through a particular second Bluetooth device that has the best network access, wherein the best network access is based on a relative weight given to each of a speed, a link type and a dollar cost for each second Bluetooth device, and wherein each relative weight is determined by user input preferences.