Patent ID: 7079834

Claim:
A method of identifying a mobile terminal in a mobile communications network, the method comprising: determining an international mobile station identity (IMSI) for a mobile terminal, the IMSI comprising a mobile country code (MCC), a mobile network code (MNC) and a mobile station identifier number (MSIN); determining a first field having a first fixed length and containing the MCC; determining a second field having a second fixed length and containing at least a part of the MNC; determining a third field having a third fixed length containing the MSIN and at least one padding value, when length of the MSIN is less than the third fixed length, wherein when the length of the MNC is greater than the second fixed length, then the MNC is parsed into at least a first part and a second part, so that the second field comprises the first part and the third field comprises the MSIN and the second part; and wherein, when total length of the MSIN and the second part is less than the third fixed length, then at least one padding value is added to the third field; and transmitting the first, second and third fields to the mobile communications network.