An enhanced connection recovery upon lost RRC connection due to radio link failure (RLF) or handover failure (HOF) is proposed. A UE first establishes an RRC connection in a source cell in a mobile communication network. Later on, the UE detects a failure event and starts an RRC reestablishment procedure in a target cell to restore the RRC connection. In a first novel aspect, a fast RLF process is applied to reduce the outage time in the serving cell. In a second novel aspect, an enhanced cell selection mechanism based on cell prioritization information is applied to reduce the outage time in the target cell. In one embodiment, multi-RAT registration is used to steer cell selection.