Telephone adapter and telephone system providing multiple telephone lines

Claim 1

A telephone system comprising: a broadband medium interface unit for coupling to a relatively broadband medium capable of conveying multiple telephone channels to the broadband medium access unit from a telephone network; a relatively narrowband telephone line within a customer premises coupling the broadband medium access unit to a plurality of telephone adapters, each having means for coupling a unique telephone thereto such that there is a one-to-one relationship between telephone adapters and unique telephones; wherein the broadband medium interface unit comprises: a digital signal processor for processing signals from the broadband medium and delivering them to the telephone line as digitized voice carried by super-audio time divided digital signals, and for processing super-audio time divided digital signals from the telephone line and delivering them to the broadband medium as broadband medium telephone signals; signaling circuitry for processing subscriber line signaling from the broadband medium and converting the subscriber line signaling to packetized signaling associated with the super-audio time divided digital signals on the relatively narrowband telephone line; and wherein each telephone adapter comprises: a subscriber line interface circuit (SLIC) connectable to the unique telephone; a line interface coupled to the telephone line, said packetized signaling including information to direct the signaling to a predetermined telephone adapter; a codec coupled to the SLIC, performing a voice coding/decoding function; and a timing circuit for time multiplexing and demultiplexing of digitized voice signals between the SLIC and the line interface.