T-carrier

Carrier system for digital transmission of multiplexed telephone calls Left: A 66 block; center and right: Cabinets containing Smartjack network interface devices for T1 circuits The T-carrier system is a member of the series of data-multiplexing carrier systems developed by AT&T Bell Laboratories for digital transmission of multiplexed telephone calls. The first version, the Transmission System 1 (T1), was introduced in 1962 in the Bell System, and could transmit up to 24 telephone calls simultaneously over a single transmission line of twisted pair copper wire. Subsequent specifications carried multiples of the basic T1 (1.544 Mbit/s) data rates, such as T2 (6.312 Mbit/s) with 96 channels, T3 (44.736 Mbit/s) with 672 channels, and others. Although a T2 was defined as part of AT&T's T-carrier system, which defined five levels, T1 through T5, only the T1 and T3 were commonly in use. Transmission System 1 The T-carrier is a hardware specification for carrying multiple time-division multiplexed (TDM) telecommunications channels over a single four-wire transmission circuit. It was developed by AT&T at Bell Laboratories ca. 1957 and first employed by 1962 for long-haul pulse-code modul