Distributed packetized switching cellular radio telephone communication system with handoff

A cellular switching system and architecture is described in which the switching associated with a call originated within one cell but now serviced within another cell is distributed among base stations which are interconnected with each other through a local area network or a packet switch. The routing procedure associated with the point of origin for a given call is stored in the memory of a switch of public switched telephone network. As an active subscriber crosses a cell boundary, the switch routes all packets of information for the given call to the originating base station for the duration of the call. Importantly, each base station then forwards each packet to the subscriber's current base station via the local area network or a packet switch. In this manner, the inventive architecture is unaffected by the increased crossing between cell boundaries since the switching associated with those calls not within the range of the initial base station is handled in a distributed manner by each base station via the local area network or a packet switch.