At long last, the weekend, which means another edition of TMCnet’s recap of the Wireless Backhaul Community news!

Market intelligence from Mobile Experts revealed this week that there will be a pretty big spike in wireless backhaul links for mobile communications. According to the report, the number of small cell wireless backhaul unit shipments during 2016 will be more than 1.8 million, generating revenue of more than $1.5 billion.

“Carrier-deployed femtocells and picocells will be positioned on utility poles and streetlights, where fiber or copper backhaul will not be available,” said Jonathan Wells, principal analyst at Mobile Experts, in a statement. “Our analysis indicates that wireless backhaul will be much more cost-effective than fiber in a widespread deployment of small cells.”

Quite a number of vendors recently showcased the results of the latest EANTC interoperability event live at the Carrier Ethernet World Congress (CEWC) 2011, it was reported this week. More than 50 engineers from major companies participated in the two-week test event, which focused on interoperability, conformance, and performance testing of the latest innovations in Carrier Ethernet, IP/MPLS, Mobile Networks and Triple Play (News - Alert). Over 60 devices were tested.

“With the growing scale and diversity of multi-vendor Carrier Ethernet service deployments worldwide, quality requirements are increasing, and mobile backhaul applications remain a major driver for innovation,” said Carsten Rossenhovel, managing director of EANTC AG, in a statement.

This week we learned that Level 3 Communications (News - Alert) inked a deal with 52Eighty to develop 200 wireless towers near Level 3’s Extended On-Net (EON) sites.

According to George Alex, CEO of 52Eighty, “52Eighty is dedicated to providing mobile operators with the most reliable and cost-effective tower access solutions capable of handling large volumes of mobile-generated data traffic. Working with Level 3 on this project will enable us to offer customers a best-in-class solution for tower access and the provisioning of advanced wireless services.”

Aruba Networks (News - Alert) was tapped by the University of Tennessee at Knoxville for a campus-wide 802.11n wireless network upgrade. The school was an early adopter of wireless technology, having deployed wireless in residence halls back in 2007. The 802.11 b/g solutions deployed then are now in the process of being upgraded to 802.11n, the company stated in a press release.

“UT Knoxville is leading the way in student, faculty and staff mobility by fully embracing 802.11n Wi-Fi as its primary access network, a change necessitated by the BYOD phenomenon,” said Robert Fenstermacher, director of education product and solutions marketing for Aruba Networks.

And lastly for this week’s edition of Wireless Backhaul Week in Review, TMCnet’s Tracey Schelmetic sums up a new white paper entitled “High Performance Wireless Backhaul Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS),” which explores the expansion of wireless information management networks to better serve transportation departments.

Instead of building newer costly roads and spending needlessly on infrastructure, going wireless is the solution that “can provide traffic authorities with a landslide of usable data about the number and location of cars on the road, road conditions, traffic patterns and other information, coupled with speed cameras, red light cameras, CCTV monitoring of traffic.”

Information about wireless ITS solutions and a case study about the city of Los Angeles' own intelligent transportation system, can be viewed here.

That’s it for this week’s Wireless Backhaul recap. Be sure to tune in next week as we take a gander at all things Wireless Backhaul.