Patent ID: 8457686

Claim:
A method of communication between a vehicle telematics unit and a call center using a personal mobile device identifier, comprising the steps of: (a) providing a vehicle telematics unit having an embedded cellular phone that includes a subscriber identity module (SIM) used for communications between the telematics unit and a call center; (b) registering the cellular phone with a cellular communications network using a telematics unit identifier stored in the SIM; (c) linking to a personal mobile device present at the vehicle via a Bluetooth connection; (d) receiving at the telematics unit via the Bluetooth connection, a mobile device identifier stored on a SIM in the mobile device; (e) temporarily replacing the telematics unit identifier in the telematics unit with the mobile device identifier while storing the telematics unit identifier in memory for later usage; (f) registering the telematics unit with the cellular communications network using a process that includes sending the mobile device identifier to the cellular communications network for use by the network as an identifier for the telematics unit; (g) placing a data call from the telematics unit to a call center; (h) sending the mobile device identifier to the call center over the cellular communications network for use by the call center in contacting the telematics unit; (i) detecting that the Bluetooth connection has terminated; (j) retrieving the telematics unit identifier from the memory; (k) restoring the retrieved telematics unit identifier in the telematics unit in place of the mobile device identifier; and (l) re-registering the telematics unit with the cellular communications network using the retrieved telematics unit identifier so that the telematics unit identifier is used by the network in connecting subsequent calls to the telematics unit.