A General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network (141) includes at least one, and preferably, a plurality of radio access networks (161–16m), each providing radio access to one or more mobile terminal users (121–12n). Associated with one or more of the access networks is a corresponding one of a plurality of Serving GPRS Service Nodes (SGSNs) (241–24m), each node serving to identify and authenticate a mobile terminal user. Advantageously, each SGSN also serves to cache IP packets from a sending mobile terminal user and to examine each packet to determine if the destination IP address corresponds to another mobile terminal user in the network. If so, then that SGSN routes the packet to the destination mobile terminal user. Otherwise, if the packet destination lies outside the network, the SGSN routes the packet to a gateway (32) for routing beyond the network.