Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for assisting handoff between wide area and local area networks. A system incorporating teachings of the present disclosure may include, for example, a wireless local area network (WLAN) base station having a wireless local area transceiver and a wide area network module. In some embodiments, the wide area network module may include a wireless receiver. The system may also include a handoff engine. In operation, the handoff engine may use wireless wide area network (WWAN) access information received via the wide area network module and initiate outputting of a packet via the wireless local area transceiver that includes at least a portion of the WWAN access information.

Abstract: Mobile terminals, such as cell phones, having an internal memory and operating in a GSM wireless network environment with a SIM, store private content such as images, ring tones, buddy lists, email and the like, in the terminal memory. The private content is associated with the IMSI/MSISDN information of the content owner. The terminal correlates the IMSI/MSISDN information of the SIM with the IMSI/MSISDN information of the private content to grant access to the content only upon a positive content/SIM correlation.