SWITCHING NETWORK

A switching network including both space division and time division switching stages where a permanent connection arrangement, interposed between the network input channels and a larger number of internal, time division channels at the input side of the space division stage, provides permanent rather than switched connections between each input channel and multiple internal channels. The pattern of permanent connections to multiple internal channels is designed such that the network is rearrangeable to avoid blocking to connect any idle output channel of the network to any busy or idle input channel.