EarthLink has rounded out its network backhaul scheme for the municipal wireless networks it is building in Philadelphia, New Orleans and other cities, having announced a partnership this week with broadband wireless vendor DragonWave to provide Ethernet-based backhaul from towers and building rooftops.

The service provider will use DragonWave's AirPair platform, which operates in licensed and unlicensed frequencies from 11 GHz to 38 GHz, provides wire-speed native Ethernet connectivity up to 500 Mb/s full duplex. In some cases, the AirPair will be part of a dual backhaul approach in which Earthlink also uses gear such as Motorola's Canopy to provide wireless backhaul in different architectural scenarios.

"One of the advantages of Ethernet-based backhaul is that you can build out the capacity you need incrementally," said Peter Allen, president and CEO of DragonWave. "Back in the old days with TDM, you had to build out a ring and hope they would come to fill it. I don't know of anyone who's building a Greenfield TDM backhaul network anymore."

Earthlink is using a Wi-Fi mesh architecture from Tropos Networks in its municipal wireless build-outs, but Allen said the AirPair is agnostic to the edge access technology being used. It can be cellular, Wi-Fi or anything else.