Due to the rapid increase of smartphone usage, even during normal operation, wireless network operators can face problems in coping with the high load of signaling and user traffic. This problem can become more significant during occurrences of disaster and/or public festivities such as new year events, sports matches, etc., when user-generated and/or application-generated network usage can be concentrated during a certain time and/or area, potentially causing congestion in the Radio Access Network (RAN) and/or the core network (CN).
In network congestion situations, a network operator may want to prioritize emergency access or high priority access over other access types, prioritize Radio Resource Control (RRC)/Non Access Stratum (NAS) messages over normal data, and/or prioritize voice services over non-voice services. One potential solution to prioritizing traffic is based on configuring User Equipment devices (UEs) in idle mode to skip Access Class Barring (ACB) procedures for certain applications, such as Multimedia Telephony (MMTel) voice, MMTel video, and Short Message Service (SMS) (e.g., MMTel SMS, SMS over SGs, and SMS over S102).
ACB, as implemented in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards, is a technique by which network operators can manage network congestion, such as congestion caused by an emergency situation in which an extraordinary number of communication sessions (e.g., telephone calls) are concurrently attempted in the network. ACB is a solution that may allow public safety (PS) personnel, such as emergency responders, as well as general emergency calls to public-safety answering points (PSAPs) to have priority on the network.
In ACB, each UE may be assigned to have a membership of one out of ten randomly allocated mobile populations, defined as Access Classes (AC) 0 to 9. The access class, of a particular UE, may be stored by the UE. In addition, UEs may be members of one or more out of five special categories (Access Classes 11 to 15). The five special categories may be allocated to specific high priority users as follows: Class 15—Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) staff; Class 14—Emergency Services; Class 13—Public Utilities; Class 12—Security Services; and Class 11—PLMN use.
In case of an overload situation, such as an emergency situation that creates congestion, the network operator may choose to use ACB to reduce access to the network. The network operator may broadcast a message that indicates which access classes are barred. UEs that are not a member of a permitted access class may block or otherwise not permit certain communications over the network. In some situations, such as non-emergency (normal) congestion situations, network operators may use ACB to control congestion, such as by setting an access class barring rate and/or barring time. Additionally, barring parameters, relating to ACB, may potentially be configured independently for mobile originating data and mobile originating signaling attempts.