A method is provided for controlling measurements in a wireless telecommunications terminal. In a Long Term Evolution (LTE) wireless communication system, the network instructs a UE to measure the received power and quality of the reference signals of the serving cell as well as of neighbor cells. The object of improving the system power consumption of user equipment (UE) that has to perform such measurements is solved by distributing the measurement functionality between RRC and PHY layers such that the RRC layer is enabled to rest in a power save mode unless results of the measurements have to be reported to the network, and to be only active for a minimum to ensure that the UE still behaves standard compliant to the network.