The application relates priority services such as the Government Emergency Telecommunication Service GETS or the Wireless Priority Service WPS which provide priority service to National Security/Emergency Preparedness personnel. In times of emergency or crisis or because of natural or other catastrophes, telecommunication networks can become congested. Throttling mechanisms such as call gapping are employed to limit the number of priority call/session requests accepted from a give source and/or handled by a given network node. However, present mechanisms rely on historical traffic levels rather than adapting to actual traffic level. This problem is solved in that parameters of the call gapping function are dynamically regulated. The method includes: monitoring a rate at which priority service requests are received at a node of the network; comparing the rate to a threshold; disabling a gapping function for priority service traffic when the rate is less than the threshold; enabling the gapping function for priority service traffic when the rate is not less than the threshold, and, dynamically regulating a parameter of the gapping function when the gapping function is enabled.