Systems and methods are disclosed for providing optimized handover decisions for mobile devices participating in streaming services. In one embodiment, a serving base station in a cellular communications network obtains a play out buffer size for a streaming service of a mobile device. The serving base station then makes a handover decision based on the play out buffer size for the streaming service of the mobile device. In one embodiment, the streaming service is a downlink streaming service to the mobile device, and the play out buffer size is a size of a downlink play out buffer at the serving base station for the downlink streaming service to the mobile device. In another embodiment, the streaming service is an uplink streaming service from the mobile device, and the play out buffer size is a size of an uplink play out buffer at the mobile device for the uplink streaming service.