This disclosure relates to techniques for UEs (including link budget limited UEs) to improve communications performance with a cellular network. A UE may be configured to provide a request (for a first process executed by the UE) for a high-bandwidth connection to a base station of a cellular network during a first RRC connection. In some embodiments, the RRC connection is established by another process. In some embodiments, the UE is configured to receive signaling from the base station indicating that the base station cannot satisfy the high-bandwidth connection request and the UE is configured not to send or receive data for the high-bandwidth connection during the first RRC connection in response to the signaling. In some embodiments, the UE is configured to re-send the request on a second, subsequent RRC connection that is not established by the first process. In some embodiments, the UE is configured to opportunistically re-send the request on subsequent RRC connections established by one or more other processes until the base station is able to grant the request.