Technology to support access-class-barring (ACB) skipping for commercial and public-safety user equipments (UEs) is disclosed. A cellular mobile network experiencing congestion at the core network level can be configured to send a communication to UEs indicating that ACB may be skipped by UEs seeking to establish device-to-device (D2D) communication using a first mode of D2D resource allocation wherein D2D resources are allocated by the network. In addition, the network can be configured to send a communication indicating that a second mode of D2D resource allocation wherein D2D resources are allocated by the UEs may be used as an alternative to the first mode. The network may also indicate that the second mode can be used as a fallback when current ACB parameters indicate that use of the first mode is not currently permitted.