A node of a radio access network includes a transceiver and a radio resource control unit. The transceiver is configured to facilitate communication with plural wireless terminals over a radio interface including transmissions on an uplink from the wireless terminals to the node and transmissions on a downlink from the node to the wireless terminals.The radio resource control unit configured to perform radio resource control functionality including layer three (L3) signaling between the node and the wireless terminals. The radio resource control unit includes an uplink scheduler configured to predict transmission of an uplink L3 message from the wireless terminals to the node and, for a particular wireless terminal, to generate, for transmission on the downlink, a grant message which in accordance with the prediction prioritizes a predicted L3 message of the particular wireless terminal relative to messages of others of the plural wireless terminals.