Breaking the Gigabit Barrier on Commercial 5G NSA - Tri-Carrier Aggregation in the Real World

5G NR
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This is not a controlled lab benchmark.
These results were recorded on a commercial Docomo network in central Tokyo using a Pixel 8 under live network conditions.

  • Download Speed: 1,040 Mbps
  • Upload Speed: 102 Mbps (LTE uplink, not shown in screenshot)
  • Connection Mode: 5G NSA
  • Device: Pixel 8

Carrier Aggregation Configuration

  • n78: 100 MHz (NR)
  • B1: 15 MHz (LTE)
  • B19: 10 MHz (LTE)

Total Aggregated Spectrum: 125 MHz
CA Combination: DC1A_19A_n78A

Operating under 3GPP Rel-15 conditions with 4x4 MIMO and ZSN enabled, throughput approached expected theoretical efficiency for this spectrum configuration.

Because this is an NSA deployment, uplink traffic remains LTE-only, which is why upload performance is typically lower or hidden in many speed test captures.

This is not “peak lab performance” - it represents realistic, field-measured effective throughput on a live urban network.

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Can a commercial 5G network really achieve speeds like this?

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Achieving this level of throughput on 5G is no longer unusual - it has become fairly common on mature commercial networks.

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A year ago, 5G NSA carrier aggregation on a live commercial network was already capable of reaching speeds up to 1.7 Gbps.

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How are your 5G NSA networks achieving these speeds?

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And how many users were connected to that cell site at the time?

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How do you check how many users are connected to the cell/site at that moment?

How do you enable carrier aggregation on a 5G NSA network?

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Bro… big and very deep question :disguised_face:

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You can see the live UE count per NR cell from the OSS.

DSP NRCELLUENUMBER
(real-time number of active User Equipment (UE) in a 5G cell)

DSP NRCELLUENUMBER
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Does anyone know?

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Only God knows​:goblin:

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There are already live NSA tests reaching around 1.5 Gbps using 5CC on LTE and 2CC on NR in the downlink.

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What’s the MML command on the 5G network?

LST CAMGTCFG

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On the 4G network it’s set to 2CC.

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I don’t know if it’s on the 5G network.

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Yes, because you have 2 carrier in 4G.

That command is for 4G.

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What happens when this is run to 5G?

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You only have one NR carrier on 5G, right?

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Yes, BS 3 only has a single n78 sector carrier active.

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If there’s only one NR carrier, then NR-CA cannot work.

And yes - true 5G carrier aggregation is mainly for SA.
In NSA, what you usually see is EN-DC with LTE + NR aggregation, not pure NR-CA.

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Okay, but with NSA alone you eventually hit a limit - without additional NR carriers, there’s not much room left to increase speed further.

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What’s the utilization?

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How did they achieve such speed on the NSA 5G network?

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5G SA is theoretically capable of reaching up to 20 Gbps, while 5G NSA can achieve around 4.5 Gbps under advanced EN-DC and carrier aggregation configurations.

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What bandwidth are you running on your 5G deployment?

And what MIMO are you using?

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