Gte Sprint Communications Corp.

Sprint Communications Comapny L.p.

Stanley P Chum

Frank Anthony DeNap

Abdul Ghafoor Akram

According to the invention, a method and apparatus are disclosed for providing multiline telephonic and data services over a single access facility. In one embodiment of the present invention, a wall unit is located at a customer premises which terminates a single analog phone line and adaptively encodes using Voice over Internet Protocol technology and multiplexes a plurality of telephonic and data calls over the single analog phone line. A corresponding gateway server (or a plurality of gateway servers), which supports one or a plurality of wall unit calls, is located in the public switched telephone network ('PSTN'), or possibly in a private telephone network. The gateway server communicates with one or more active wall units to extract one or more telephonic and data calls from the analog signal produced from a wall unit, and to appropriately route the telephonic calls over the PSTN and the data packets over the Internet or to other data services. The telephonic and data devices connected to the wall unit are each assigned individual virtual phone numbers by the provider of the service embodying this invention. To reach one of these devices, its respective virtual telephone number is used. The virtual phone numbers are published across the PSTN and therefore can be reached from anywhere on the PSTN. In another embodiment, virtual phone numbers are not required, as phone calls destined for subscribed telephone number are automatically routed through the gateway server.

Method and apparatus for simultaneous multiline phone and data services over a single access facility

An in-service line monitoring technique to detect and isolate marginal and failed digital transmission equipment within a digital telecommunication system having at least two end terminals. At selected terminal and repeater locations, a digital error detector monitors the bit error rate for each location. The detected BER is truncated to include at least the most significant digit and the exponent of the BER. The truncated BER is stored and then encoded for transmission back to the command center usually located at an end terminal. At the one end terminal the encoded BER is stored and displayed upon request. By being able to monitor the truncated BER at any location or direction, maintenance personnel are able to determine when a link in the system is beginning to deteriorate well before a complete path failure occurs.

Diagnostic technique for determining fault locations within a digital

In-service line monitoring apparatus to detect and isolate marginal and failed digital transmission equipment within a digital telecommunication system having at least two end terminals. At selected terminal and repeater locations, a digital error detector monitors the bit error rate for each location. The detected BER is truncated to include at least the most significant digit and the exponent of the BER. The truncated BER is stored and then encoded for transmission back to the command center usually located at an end terminal. At the one end terminal the encoded BER is stored and displayed upon request. By being able to monitor the truncated BER at any location or direction, maintenance personnel are able to determine when a link in the system begins to deteriorate well before a complete path failure occurs.

Local and remote bit error rate monitoring for early warning of fault

A novel 3-way digital branching network located at a telecommunications repeater branches digital service channel signals into and out of the digital transmission system. On the drop side a first adder combines the West-to-East and East-to-West digital service channel signals before being converted to analog signals for use by the local service channel equipment. On the insert side the locally generated service channel signals are digitized and then digitally combined with the through path signals by a second and third adder for insertion into the West-to-East and East-to-West digital transmission paths.

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Union City, CA, United States of America

Stanley P Chum