Physical channel establishment

1. A method of controlling physical channel establishment in a wireless communication system, which method comprises:

a.) determining if system frame number timing is to be maintained, and thereby determining if decoding of a system frame number is required as part of an initialization of a physical channel establishment procedure;

b.) if the system frame number timing is to be maintained, thereby the decoding of the system frame number is not required to achieve the channel establishment, initializing a decoding of the system frame number to estimate the quality of a cell with which the physical channel is to be established; and

c.) if the decoding of the system frame number fails, terminating the channel establishment procedure.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the initialization of the physical channel establishment procedure is responsive to an inter-frequency hard-handover.

3. The method of claim 2 further comprising, if the decoding of the system frame number fails, initializing a physical channel establishment procedure for a previously established channel.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the initialization of the physical channel establishment procedure is responsive to an intra-frequency hard-handover.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the initialization of the physical channel establishment procedure is responsive to a state transition.

6. The method of claim 1 in which the determining step is dependent upon a standardized physical channel establishment procedure.

7. The method of claim 6 in which the standardized physical channel establishment procedure is in accordance with 3GPP release 5.

8. A computer program for carrying out the method of claim 1 , wherein the computer program is a series of operating instructions stored on a non-transitory computer readable medium that directs the operation of a processor when executed thereby.

9. A computer program product for storing computer program code on a non-transitory computer readable medium which, when run on a computer, carries out a method of controlling physical channel establishment in a wireless communication system, which method comprises:

a.) determining if system frame number timing is to be maintained, and thereby determining if decoding of a system frame number is required as part of an initialization of a physical channel establishment procedure;

b.) if the system frame number timing is to be maintained, thereby the decoding of the system frame number is not required to achieve the channel establishment, initializing a decoding of the system frame number to estimate the quality of a cell with which the physical channel is to be established; and

c.) if the decoding of the system frame number fails, terminating the channel establishment procedure.

10. An apparatus for controlling physical channel establishment in a wireless communication system, comprising:

a.) means for determining if system frame number timing is to be maintained, and thereby determining if decoding of a system frame number is required as part of an initialization of a physical channel establishment procedure;

b.) means for initializing, if the system frame number timing is to be maintained, thereby the decoding of the system frame number is not required to achieve the channel establishment, a decoding of the system frame number to estimate the quality of a cell with which the physical channel is to be established; and

c.) means for terminating, if decoding of the system frame number fails, the channel establishment procedure.

11. A user equipment of a mobile communications system including apparatus according to claim 10 .