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.