US Patent 11212859 5G avoidance during LTE-based real-time communications

A radio access network (RAN) configured to support real-time communications over a Long-Term Evolution (LTE) connection is described herein. When a request for a data transmission is received and a real-time communication session over the LTE connection is established, the RAN utilizes the LTE connection, not a New Radio (NR) connection, for the data transmission. When a request for a further real-time communication is received and there is an active data transmission session over the NR connection, the RAN performs at least one of ceasing to allocate traffic to the NR connection for downlink or reconfiguring the data transmission session to send data over the LTE connection.