Here are two papers that use cellular events to optimize performance (if you have more related work, feel free to share with us):

piStream [Mobicom'15]: http://xyzhang.ece.wisc.edu/papers/XXie_MobiCom15_piStream.pdf

LinkForecast [Mobisys'15 submission but rejected]: see attachment

Sprout [NSDI'13]: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/nsdi13/nsdi13-final113.pdf

Adaptive Congestion Control for Unpredictable Cellular Networks [SIGCOMM'15]: http://conferences.sigcomm.org/sigcomm/2015/pdf/papers/p509.pdf

All Your Network Are Belong to Us: A Transport Framework for Mobile Network Selection: http://people.csail.mit.edu/shuodeng/papers/hotmobile14.pdf