A solution to the data communications requirement in rural areas

Large areas and the low per-area requirement of high speed digital data communications circuits have left and remote areas devoid of these services. Current available technology was designed to operate over relative short distances and requires that the client be situated within a certain distance (typical 7 km) of a central exchange. The most trivial solution to this problem must make use of the existing infrastructure. Such a system must aim to provide the same reliable service that is currently offered by high speed digital data services. It should blend the frequency division multiplex (FDM) infrastructure of rural areas with the time division multiplexing (TDM) infrastructure used by high speed digital data services. A system was designed and tested to form a interface between these two technologies, offering analog modem technology as a front end to the FDM system and a flexible CCITT recommendation G.703 co-directional interface into the TDM digital data network at a maximum speed of 9600 bit/s