A novel and useful mechanism for regulating and managing the peak current consumption of the subsystems in a mobile handset device. The mechanism of the present invention is operative to limit the current consumption at any point in time to a predetermined level that is within the current handling capability of the power management system of the handheld device. The mechanism operates by having the high peak current subsystems advertise in advance their intention to initiate a current peak. An arbitration mechanism considers the advertisements or requests sent from interested subsystems and determines whether a subsystem is either granted permission to initiate or is blocked from initiating a peak current session.