Charging Information for WLAN Network Selection in 3GPP-WLAN Data Offloading

A wireless user equipment (UE), comprising:

• one or more radios, coupled to one or more antennas configured for wireless communication via at least one cellular communication network and at least one wireless local area network (WLAN);
• and
• a processing element operably coupled to the one or more radios, the processing element configured to cause the UE to:
• receive, via the one or more radios, information from a cellular communication network regarding one or more WLANs in the vicinity of the UE, wherein the information comprises charging data regarding the one or more WLANs;
• receive one or more rules from the cellular communication network regarding whether to offload communication traffic from the cellular communication network to a particular WLAN based on charging data relating to the particular WLAN;
• detect a first WLAN of the one or more WLANs;
• and
• determine whether to offload communication traffic from the cellular communication network to the first WLAN based at least in part on the one or more rules.

A non-transitory computer-readable memory medium comprising program instructions executable by a processor of a user equipment (UE) to cause the UE to:

• receive information from a cellular communication network regarding one or more wireless local area networks (WLANs) in the vicinity of the UE, wherein the information comprises charging data regarding a first WLAN of the one or more WLANs;
• receive one or more rules from the cellular communication network regarding whether to offload communication traffic from the cellular communication network to a particular WLAN based on charging data relating to the particular WLAN;
• detect the first WLAN;
• and
• determine whether to offload communication traffic from the cellular communication network to the first WLAN based at least in part on the one or more rules.