Apparatus, system and method for initiating wlan service using beacon signals

A multimode wireless communication device comprising:

• a wireless wide area network (WWAN) receiver to receive wireless communication signals within a WWAN downlink frequency band from a WWAN base station and to receive a beacon signal within the WWAN downlink frequency band from an access point;
• a WLAN receiver to receive WLAN signals from the access point;
• and
• a processor to activate, in response to a determination that a characteristic of the beacons signal exceeds a threshold, the WLAN receiver to receive the WLAN signals.

A method performed at an access point configured to communicate with a multimode wireless communication device, the method comprising:

• receiving a wireless wide area network (WWAN) down link (DL) signal comprising uplink (UL) transmission control information;
• receiving a WWAN UL signal from the multimode wireless communication device;
• determining a proximity of the multimode wireless communication device to the access point based on the UL transmission control information and the WWAN RL signal;
• transmitting a beacon signal within a WWAN frequency band to the multimode wireless communication device when the proximity is less than a threshold.