Apart from the LTE Carrier Aggregation used in practice today that combines channels in different frequency bands for higher throughput there are also CA combinations that combine channels in the same frequency band that are not next to each other. Such combinations are called Intra-Band Non-Contiguous. Quite a mouthful. Now what would they be good for?
I don't have any practical examples but I think such combinations would make sense for network operators that have either received several chunks of spectrum in the same band over time or they have acquired additional spectrum, e.g. through a merger with another network operator.
When looking at this carrier aggregation table such combinations are foreseen for the US, Europe and China. In the US the non contiguous combination is foreseen in band 4 (1900/2100 MHz) which quite a lot of carriers seem to use. In Europe, band 3 (1800 MHz) and band 7 (2600 MHz) have such combinations defined as well. I wonder which carriers might want to use them in the near future. Any idea?