stc, Nokia and MediaTek announced that they have successfully verified 3 Component Carrier Aggregation (3CC-CA) in a 5G Standalone (SA) network in the city of Makkah for the first time in the Middle East and Africa. Carrier Aggregation (CA) allows mobile operators to reach higher throughputs by combining FDD and TDD spectrum and efficiently utilize their spectrum assets to enhance the 5G user experience. CA will allow stc to deliver leading 5G services to its customers, as well as achieve a faster time to market for new 5G use cases.
The companies used the combination of one FDD carrier (20MHz) and two TDD carriers to create 180MHz of spectrum using FDD-TDD CA technology. Nokia used its commercial AirScale Baseband, massive MIMO and RRH products, powered by its Reefshark chipset on stc’s live network. MediaTek provided its 5G mobile platform featuring its Release-16 ready, M80 modem. CA will also improve the overall 5G experience as well as reduce the battery consumption of user devices in stc’s network.
CA combines spectrum from different frequency bands to enhance coverage and network capacity, providing higher data rates, increased coverage and superior indoor performance by allowing service providers to make optimal use of 5G spectrum. It also enables service providers to bring down the cost of deploying 5G networks while enhancing customer experience.