With rapid development of wireless communications technologies and popularity of intelligent user terminals, an increasing number of user terminals can support a heterogeneous network. The heterogeneous network includes access networks of different standards. Communications standards may include a wireless cellular network, a wireless local area network (WLAN), a worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) network, Bluetooth, infrared, and the like. User experience consistency can be improved by integrating access technologies of networks of multiple communications standards.
Currently, an integration solution to networks of multiple communications standards that is provided in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is integration based on an Internet Protocol (IP) layer. In this integration solution, networks of multiple communications standards such as a cellular network and a WLAN network can be authorized and authenticated together. The cellular network can assist implementation of WLAN network discovery, and the WLAN network can implement offloading of some data in the cellular network.
However, in the foregoing solution, spectrum resources of networks of different communications standards cannot be comprehensively used. When a terminal has not accessed a network of a particular standard, or when a network of a particular standard has heavy load when sending network information of the network to a terminal, cooperation in terms of sending network information cannot be effectively implemented by using a network of another standard.