The invention relates to a method for transferring special cell information in a communications system and a cellular system and mobile station realizing the method. The invention can be advantageously applied to cellular systems specifying cell-specific services for users, such as cell-dependent charging. An idea of the invention is that special cell identities are transferred from a mobile station to a base station system in coded form (521, 522) in such a manner that the transfer of special cell identity information uses fewer bits than what would be needed for the transfer of special cell identities as such. Cell identities are advantageously chosen such that the cell identities of a single area can be coded using a small number of bits. In accordance with the above-mentioned principle according to the invention the transfer can be carried out advantageously in such a manner that the first special cell identity in the special cell list is transferred as such (501) whereafter it is transferred transfer codes (522) which are differences (521) of two consecutive special cell identities in the special cell list. The special cell identities in the special cell list are advantageously arranged in the order of magnitude in the special cell list. Using the solution according to the invention it is possible to transfer the special cell information on the radio path by means of a single short message so that the transfer of special cell information can be carried out quickly without using a lot of the radio path's capacity in connection with call setup and handover.