Apparatus, which has a multilayer protocol stack for processing incoming messages, determines PTT state from messages received from a peripheral over a wireless serial communication channel. The apparatus: receives (902), from the peripheral, a sequence of messages comprising a plurality of data messages (e.g., RFCOMM messages), wherein each of the data messages provides an indication of a PTT state for the apparatus, and wherein the sequence of data messages is received over a short range wireless data path for exchanging priority data that comprises a wireless serial communication channel and that is different from a short range wireless data path for exchanging non-priority data. A pattern detector in the apparatus performs (904) a pattern matching process, within the first two layers of the multilayer protocol stack, to determine the PTT state indicated by each of the data messages and sets (906) the apparatus to have the determined PTT states.