Methods for reducing
paging load when a
Mobile Station (MS) switches between a
cell providing access according to a first
radio access technology (RAT) and a
cell providing access according to General
Access Network (GAN)
radio access technology, wherein different
radio resource (RR) entities in the MS are associated with the first RAT and the GAN
radio access technology, a combined
radio access network (RAN) controller manages cells associated with the first RAT and the GAN, and the combined RAN controller is unable to independently determine when the MS switches service from the first RAT to the GAN, and vice versa. When an MS has successfully acquired service from a
wireless access point associated with the GAN (i.e., it has successfully performed a GAN
registration procedure towards a GAN controller (GANC) using that
wireless access point), wherein the
wireless access point is associated with a
cell in the same geographical service area as a cell associated with the first RAT through which the MS was previously receiving service, it sends a message to the combined RAN controller indicating that the GAN RR entity has become the serving RR entity in the MS, whereby the combined RAN controller can forward all future
paging messages for the MS only through the access point associated with the GAN.