A communication method provided in embodiments of this application is a method for establishing an RRC connection between a terminal and a RAN, and the establishment of the RRC connection includes first RRC connection establishment and second RRC connection establishment. The first RRC connection establishment is a wireless RRC connection between the terminal and a first RAN network element, and the second RRC connection establishment is a wireless or wired RRC connection between the first RAN network element and a second RAN network element.