High-Speed Synchronous Transmission Line Access Terminal

A terminal (22) for a telecommunications system provides access to one or two high-speed synchronous transmission lines (10, 12) by both low-speed transmission lines (16) and subscriber lines (20). A core moduled (24) includes interfaces (32) to the high-speed lines (10, 12), a time slot interchanger (34), an interface (42) to the low-speed transmission lines (16), processors (40) and overhead circuitry (40) for supporting the terminal (22). An access module (26) includes a plurality of line shelves (48) connected to subscriber lines (20), each line shelf (48) includes a pair of processors (68) and four time slot assignors (82). A multi-link serial bus (44) connects the time slot interchanger (34) to the access module (26) and to the low-speed interface (42) and provides close coupling between the processors (40) in the core module (24) and the line shelves (48). The processors (40) cooperate to groom subscriber information from said subscriber lines (20) to and from time slots in said high-speed feeder line (10, 12) and said low-speed transmission line (16). Subscriber information may also be groomed between time slots of the high-speed feeder line (10, 12) and the low-speed transmission lines (16) and between time slots within each subscriber line (20).