Reporting of user plane congestion

A non-transitory machine readable storage medium having instructions embodied thereon, the instructions which when executed by one or more processors perform the following:

• identifying, at a radio access network (RAN) node, RAN user plane congestion (UPCON) information (RUCI);
• and
• providing the RUCI to a policy and charging rules function (PCRF) in a core network (CN) to enable the PCRF to perform a policy decision using the RUCI to reduce UPCON at the RAN node.

A radio access network (RAN) node having one or more processors configured to:

• identify RAN user plane congestion (UPCON) information (RUCI);
• and
• provide the RUCI to a policy and charging rules function (PCRF) in a core network (CN) to enable the PCRF to perform a policy decision to reduce UPCON at the RAN node using the RUCI.

A method for facilitating policy decisions based on user plane congestion (UPCON), the method comprising:

• identifying, at a radio access network (RAN) node, RAN user plane congestion (UPCON) information (RUCI);
• and
• providing the RUCI to a policy and charging rules function (PCRF) in a core network (CN) from the RAN node to enable the PCRF to perform the policy decisions to reduce UPCON at the RAN node using the RUCI.