Apparatus and method for reception of neighboring cell service

A mobile terminal to receive a point-to-multipoint service in mobile communications, the terminal comprising:

• a transceiver to transmit and to receive signals;
• and
• a processor operatively connected to and cooperating with the transceiver to detect that the point-to-multipoint service is unavailable from a current cell that serves the terminal, and either to receive the point-to-multipoint service from at least one neighboring cell from which the point-to-multipoint service is available while the serving cell continues to serve the terminal, or to select a cell among cells from which the point-to-multipoint service is available and to receive the point-to-multipoint service from the selected cell,
• wherein the point-to-multipoint service is a multimedia broadcast/multicast service (MBMS) service,
• wherein information on a common channel is used to detect whether the point-to-multipoint service is unavailable from the current cell, and
• wherein the common channel is a multimedia broadcast/multicast service (MBMS) control channel (MCCH).