Abstract: A mobile station communicates with both a cellular network, by which it is assigned a mobile identification number, and to a cordless cellular base station utilizing the same cellular frequency range and communications protocol. The cordless cellular base station is preferably connected to a public switched telephone network and is assigned a landline number. The cordless cellular base station acts as a conduit between the mobile station and the public switched telephone network. When the mobile station comes within range of a cordless cellular base station, it deregisters automatically from the cellular network and register with the cordless cellular base station. Once the mobile station is communicating with the cordless cellular base station, the cordless cellular base station communicates with the cellular network to instruct the cellular network to route all calls for mobile identification number to the cordless cellular base station's landline number.

Abstract: A remote unit has the ability to switch automatically from a public network to a non-public network comprising of private and residential base stations. In the preferred embodiment, the public network is characterized by cells with each cell having a unique identification signal. Initially, a first switchover from a public network to a non-public network requires the user to manually cause the switchover. The remote unit stores the first identification signal transmitted by the base station from which the remote unit traversed into the region covered by the non-public base station. In addition, the remote unit stores the identification signal associated with a cell of the public network previous to the current cell if the switchover occurred less than two (2) minutes from the exit of the previous cell. In this manner, the remote unit can adaptively learn as it traverses other possible paths from other cells into the region covered by the non-public base station.