To provide a handoff control method capable of dealing with a point- to-multipoint(PMP) connection in a mobile ATM network by executing handoff under the control of a switching node selected as a crossover switch.

A new base station having a prescribed service area is specified, and a handoff request showing information on the new base station is sent out from a former virtual circuit(VC) to a current base station. At the switching node, that handoff request is evaluated and it is judged whether that switching node is an entry border node (EBN) for covering the new base station or not. When the judged result is negative, that handoff request is passed through to the upstream side but when the result is positive, that switching node is selected as a crossover switch and under the control of that crossover switch, handoff is executed.