That's just an entry in a table maintained by the kernel. "Active connection" doesn't nescisarily mean data is sent over it. Also, the other poster is right, this is exactly how the other push notifications work.
Of course, but the point is that you have only one connection open (the one to Apple or GCM), not one for each app, one for each imap account, etc. If you let anybody keep a connection alive continuosly you end up with a mess.