Patent ID: 8259666

Claim:
A method comprising: storing a preferred roaming list (PRL) of a carrier in a mobile station operable through base stations of a macro wireless communication network operated by the carrier and through a plurality of customer premises femto cells, the PRL including one or more entries providing information for use in searching for and selecting a femto cell base transceiver system (BTS) and one or more entries providing information for use in searching for and selecting a macro network base station, in a network discovery operation, wherein: each femto cell is capable of operating on a selected one or more of a plurality of frequency channels, and each femto cell is configured to provide at least a pilot on one of the frequency channels designated as a primary frequency channel for femto cell communication, and the information for use in searching for and selecting a femto cell includes an identification of the primary frequency channel for femto cell communication and system identification information to be used by the BTSs of all femto cell BTSs of the carrier's customers communicating on the primary frequency channel; upon initiating network discovery, searching for a system with which to register the mobile station based on the stored PRL, the search including searching for the system identification information on the primary frequency channel; and initiating a procedure to register the mobile station with one of the femto cell BTSs, responsive to the search detecting the system identification information on the primary frequency channel.