A method is provided for passing information through a network during overload and subsequent actions to reduce congestion. An exemplary method includes receiving an origination request from a mobile device of a calling party, detecting an overload condition, transmitting a message request to a terminating network element associated with a called party in response to the origination request during the overload condition, receiving an acknowledgement of receipt of the message request, and denying the origination request. In this manner, high resource requests (e.g. a voice call) may be converted into lower resource requests (e.g. text or voicemail messages), or the resource request may be deferred to a more appropriate time.