Techniques for efficient storage and retrieval of Preferred Roaming Lists
are disclosed. In one aspect, PRL entries are stored in two tables. One table contains
records that are common to two or more PRL entries. Another table stores any information
that is unique to a PRL entry, as well as an indicator of which common record is
associated with it. The common record is concatenated with the unique information
to generate the uncompressed PRL entry. Various other aspects of the invention
are also presented. These aspects have the benefit of reducing the memory requirements
for storing a PRL. In addition, time required to download the compressed PRL is reduced.
