A conditional payload header suppression is disclosed to improve compression, by providing the flexibility to dynamically introduce fields/header bytes, which change temporarily or infrequently in packets. The embodiment also uses a dynamic mask as part of the payload header suppression packet to indicate which of the conditionally suppressed header bytes are present in the packet sent over the air or the communication medium. An embodiment of this invention increases the header compression for packets such as IP/UDP/RTP (VOIP) and TCP ACK in communication networks, such as WiMax.