First Pacific Networks Inc, a Sunnyvale-based telecommunications company, has been awarded a Notice of Allowance by the US Patent Office on its application to patent a new communications architecture that supports simultaneous transmission of switched speech high and low speed data and video over a single wire. The patent describes a fully-distributed speech switching system using a media-independent communications bus topology that can access speech, data and video services from a single information outlet. The architecture is embodied in First Pacific’s Personal Xchange system that provides fully-distributed speech transmission to every user without the requirement for a centralised switching unit. Described as analogous to the personal computer in that the necessary intelligence resides in each desktop unit, but mixed digital speech and data and analogue video are carried on the same wire. The system is claimed to have no functional distance limitations and to support multiple types of data networking including Ethernet, PC Network and MAP/TOP. Although the Personal Xchange system is initially aimed at business, the company sees it as ideally suited for the local residential telephone loop environment, ultimately enabling cost-effective deployment of fibre optic-based communications systems to both business and home markets, and unlike the public switched telephone network, there is no single point of failure. The fire at a telephone company central office in Hinsdale, Illinois, which stranded thousands of users in the Chicago suburbs without phone service for more than a week – underscored the problems of funnelling phone service through a single location, comments First Pacific chief executive Donald Marquart, a co-inventor of the product. The Personal Xchange system is scheduled to begin field trials in the autumn with general availability of the product set for early 1990.
