By having common LA, you:

1. reduce signaling (less LAU, less battery consumption)

2. less missed calls complains
3. huge benefit for small number of terminals where BOTH RANs are very weak
Some prerequisites:
- common VLR
- core people capable of defining it properly ;-). Remember, it is core!
- no silly national roaming agreements preventing it
- no differentiation between users (GSM only SIM, UTRAN only SIM etc.)

Test case: do it in small region and test. It is easy to do, if you have common VLR.
Please note: it cannot be done on PS domain (no common RA).
test: monitor LAU stats, paging.

paging KPIs: as those cases are rare, you will not notice big change.
It is lost in noise (not statistically significant).
But you will notice less "5 bars and then I got missed call SMS" complains.

We did trial:
Terminal with capability to force RAT change.
At the same time:
- dial number of the terminal
- force terminal into another RAT
When different VLR: 100 % paging failure
When common LA: 100 % paging success

-As i understood as per your experiences there are 3 major category of problem:

1. LAC problem which when you used same LAC big impact of improvement of missed call
alert you have observed.

2. Gs interface between MSC/VLR and SGSN can help to decrease teh problem

3. If we received complain from a single user we can be suspect to his/her UE and if in a

area several user has given complaint we can reject UE problem

-Another reason is with smartphones: they like to use GPRS without user knowledge,
and without Gs or DTM, terminal is not listening to paging ch.

As there can be only one outstanding page, you are unreachable if terminal is
answering page for SMS delivery. This is commonly detected after we receive complain.

-Have you ever got some complains like:

- I have 5 bars on the phone, but got "missed call SMS"
- my batteries are running out too fast

In order to lower signalling in 2g/3g network, using common LA/VLR helps a lot.
When terminal moves between RATs in idle mode, there is no need to do location update,
thus less signalling.
As page is send to both BSS and UTRAN, there is higher probability for terminal to
catch paging message.

You can not do it if:

- you core network does not allow (pre-R4 architecture; bss and utran not on same VLR)
- you have some roaming agreements preventing it

Many networks use it. UTRAN and BSS LA must be coordinated,

but it is better to do LAU on defined border compared to low signal strength deep indoor.

There are some terminals performing badly (one brand do LAU regarless of common LA),
but it is worth doing it.