UK incumbent BT has claimed a European double first by demonstrating four-component carrier (4CC) outside a laboratory over its commercial 5G Standalone (SA) network. BT combined channels at 2.1 GHz, 2.6 GHz, 3.4 GHz and 3.6 GHz, used commercially by its mobile arm EE, based on Nokia AirScale RAN equipment and the M80 5G modem from Taiwan’s semiconductor firm MediaTek. Carrier aggregation enables higher data rates by bonding two or more component carriers operating in spectrum an operator has acquired but that may be disjointed. The ability to combine these assets into a single aggregated channel via CA was first introduced around a decade ago in LTE (3GPP Release 10_, but has come into its own in 5G, with…