Techniques to manage service requests in a wireless network

At least one non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising a set of instructions that, in response to being executed at user equipment (UE), cause the UE to:

• access a paging message received while the UE is in an Evolved Packet System (EPS) mobility management (EMM)-IDLE state and using EPS services with control plane Cellular Internet of Things (CIoT) EPS optimization;
• determine, based on the paging message, that a mobility management entity (MME) has user data to send to the UE;
• determine, based on the paging message, that the MME will send the user data via a control plane;
• send a service request message to the MME to initiate a service request procedure to enable the UE to receive the user data via the control plane, the service request message to contain a service type information element (IE) comprising a value indicating a mobile terminating request;
• and
• receive an EPS session management (ESM) data transport message from the MME, the ESM data transport message to contain the user data.

An apparatus, comprising:

• processing circuitry;
• and
• a non-transitory computer-readable storage media having stored thereon instructions for execution by the processing circuitry to:
• access, at a mobility management entity (MME), a service request message received from user equipment (UE), the service request message to contain a service type information element (IE);
• identify a service type value comprised in the service type IE;
• in response to a determination that the service type value indicates a mobile terminating request, initiate a transport of user data to the UE via a control plane;
• and
• send an EPS session management (ESM) data transport message to the UE, the ESM data transport message to contain the user data.