RELAYING THIRD PARTY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS THROUGH A PORTABLE WIRELESS SYSTEM

摘要

A portable wireless system is described. The portable wireless system has a controller that is operable to selectively configure the portable wireless system as a personal electronic appliance or a third party wireless repeater that is configured to relay wireless signals between a third party electronic appliance and a wireless network. Accordingly, the portable wireless system (e.g., a cellular telephone, a pager or a personal digital assistant) may act as a wireless repeater for third party wireless communications when the portable wireless system otherwise is not in use. In this way, the portable wireless system increases the utilization of existing wireless network infrastructures (e.g., a cellular telephone network) by making one or more unused wireless channels available to other devices. A novel incentives-based business model that encourages owners of portable electronic appliances to fully utilize existing wireless network capacity also is described.