Various methods and apparatuses are provided to address the need for improved multi-carrier communication. In one apparatus, a radio access network (RAN) (402) includes multiple network nodes (403, 406) operative to transmit, via multiple carriers (411-412), packet data to a user element (UE) (401) using a protocol stack. The protocol stack includes a radio link control (RLC) layer split into an upper RLC processing layer and multiple lower RLC processing layers. Each lower RLC processing layer is associated with one carrier of the multiple carriers and each lower RLC processing layer supports packet data transmission via its associated carrier. The upper RLC processing layer supports packet data transmission via the multiple carriers.