Patent ID: 8351919

Claim:
User equipment apparatus for facilitating the selection of a network from a plurality of networks that conform to and provide communications to the same user equipment apparatus using different communication standards, each network having a unique identifying network identifier with a file length, the user equipment apparatus comprising: an electronic storage element storing a plurality of network identifiers in at least one of a user controlled specific network identifier and an operator controlled specific network identifier list, each network identifier of said plurality of network identifiers having a file length shortened from the file length of the identifying network identifier and stored in said at least one list without an indication of a file length of the plurality of network identifiers, said stored network identifiers being capable of being a variable length and identifying a particular network permitted for communication to be selected by the user equipment from among the plurality of networks, at least one of which conforms to a first communication standard and at least one of which conforms to a different second communication standard; and a numerical representation of the number of network identifiers stored as a first byte of said at least one list and adjacent at least one of said plurality of stored network identifiers at said electronic storage element, said numerical representation being configured to identify to the user equipment apparatus the number of said network identifiers stored at said electronic storage element, one network identifier being separated from another network identifier by a predetermined delimiter between them.