Home location register for manual visitors in a telecommunication system

Claim 1

In a cellular telecommunication system in which mobile subscribers may roam from a home network to a visited network having an automatic roaming agreement with said home network, and to a visited network without an automatic roaming agreement with said home network, a system for providing visiting subscribers to said visited network without said automatic roaming agreement with the same registration capabilities as visiting subscribers to said visited network having an automatic roaming agreement with said home network, said system comprising: means within each visited network for identifying the home network of each visiting subscriber; means within each visited network for determining whether or not the home network of each visiting subscriber has an automatic roaming agreement with the visited network; means within each visited network for classifying as an automatic visitor each visiting subscriber whose home network has an automatic roaming agreement with the visited network; means within each visited network for classifying as a manual visitor each visiting subscriber whose home network does not have an automatic roaming agreement with the visited network; means within each visited network for maintaining a database of information on manual visitors; means for storing in said database, registration information regarding each manual visitor, said storing means storing said registration information upon each manual visitor's initial call attempt in said visited network; and means for accessing from each of said visited network's mobile switching centers, said database of registration information upon each manual visitor's subsequent call attempts within said visited network.