Patent ID: 7808945

Claim:
A wireless handheld apparatus for communicating a voice communication between a sender device and a recipient device and for use in conjunction with a fee-based wireless network, said apparatus comprising: one or more radios that transmit the voice communication to the recipient device via the fee-based wireless network and via a non-network non fee-based spectrum without use of infrastructure of a communications network, the one or more radios are configured to send the voice communication directly to the recipient device via the non-network non fee-based spectrum without use of infrastructure of a communications network at times and at other times to send the voice communication to the recipient device via the fee-based wireless network, wherein the one or more radios signal an attempt to establish the voice communication with the recipient device using the non-network non fee-based spectrum without use of the infrastructure of the communications network, and automatically transmit the voice communication directly to the recipient device using the non-network non fee-based spectrum without use of the infrastructure of the communications network if the attempt is successful, but automatically communicate the voice communication to the recipient device using the fee-based wireless network if the attempt is unsuccessful; and a memory that retains non-network communication transport mechanism data associated with the non-network non fee-based spectrum and that corresponds to a potential recipient device of the voice communication, wherein the non-network communication transport mechanism data includes data for each different non-network transport mechanism employed to communicate the voice communication, the non-network communication transport mechanism uses no infrastructure of the communications network, wherein the one or more radios operate in the non-network non fee-based spectrum to transmit the voice communication directly to the recipient device via a proximity communication transport mechanism comprising an ultra high frequency proximity communication transport mechanism, wherein the one or more radios are configurable to selectively operate in the fee-based wireless network for a first contact stored in a contact directory in the memory, and in the non-network nonfee-based spectrum for a second contact in the contact directory.