METHOD FOR A RADIOTELEPHONE TO SCAN FOR ALTERNATE RADIOTELEPHONE SYSTEMS

摘要

A method for allowing a radiotelephone to scan for alternate radiotelephone systems, where each cellular radiotelephone system is within a corresponding geographic area and each cell has a base station providing paging and voice communication, includes a first step (304) of registering the radiotelephone on a radiotelephone system. A next step includes establishing (306) whether alternate technology scanning has been enabled for the radiotelephone. If alternate technology scanning is disabled, the radiotelephone receives paging messages from the base station and acknowledges the paging messages addressed to the radiotelephone (316). If alternate technology scanning is enabled (312), the radiotelephone scans (314) for an alternate technology while the base station repeats any paging messages addressed to the radiotelephone and ignores a lack of acknowledgement from the radiotelephone for paging messages addressed to the radiotelephone.