Method and apparatus for communication traffic control

A traffic controller component is disclosed for managing packet-based communications on behalf of a mobile communications device, to enable more efficient use of packet-based communication sessions by synchronizing such communications. Battery power and network resource use is improved by enabling synchronized exploitation of packet-based communication session by a plurality of independent applications. The traffic controller notifies and coordinates a set of registered applications when a session is initiated and is available for their use. The traffic controller determines whether an application should use an initiated session with reference to e.g. an energy usage metric or the time elapsed since the application last communicated with a network server.