A technique to allow a server such as a location server to throttle concurrent or closely timed location requests for the position of a given wireless device such that within a certain time period preferably only one location request will be initiated to the positioning engine and the remaining closely-timed location requests will be buffered or cached. When a position for the given wireless device is returned per the outstanding location request, then the retrieved position will be used to respond to each of the buffered location requests. Thus, a plurality of location requests are satisfied with a single request to the positioning engine. By optimizing the use of cached position requests, throttling of location requests per the invention reduces network traffic significantly, increases the efficiency of a positioning server (therefore reducing business cost), and provides for an improved grade or quality of location based services in general.