The disclosure describes apparatus and methods for communicating control plane data with a mobile device in a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network employing carrier aggregation. A network apparatus, such as an enhanced NodeB (eNodeB) or a mobility management entity (MME), can be configured to evaluate a measurement report (MR) received from a mobile device for one or more radio frequency (RF) conditions associated with a primary network cell and one or more RF conditions associated with a secondary network cell. Then, based on the evaluation, the network apparatus can determine to communicate the control plane data with the mobile device via the primary network cell, the secondary network cell, or both. The control plane data can correspond to non-access stratum (NAS) information, radio resource control (RRC) information, or a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) retransmission of previously transmitted control plane data.