VoIP telephony peripheral

A packetized voice telephony system comprising:

• a set top box located within a first housing and including:
• a cable modem front end for receiving cable television services and packetized voice calls, wherein the cable modem front end performs television tuning and demodulation, wherein the cable modem front end separates the cable television services and the packetized voice calls;
• and
• a television decoder coupled to the cable modem front end;
• and
• a voice peripheral located within a second housing external to the first housing and coupled to the set top box for receiving the packetized voice calls from the set top box and for supporting packetized voice telephony services and including one or more telephone interfaces for coupling to subscriber POTS equipment.

A voice peripheral of a packetized voice cable telephony system comprising:

• a housing external to and couplable to a set top box housing, the housing including:
• a processor unit adapted to be coupled to a set top box including a cable modem front end, wherein the processor unit supports packetized voice telephony services;
• and
• one or more telephone interfaces coupled to the processor unit adapted to couple to subscriber POTS equipment.

A method for providing packetized voice telephony comprising:

• receiving digital voice packets from a set top box including a cable modem front end that supports cable television services, wherein the digital voice packets represent a telephone call;
• converting the digital voice packets to an analog voice signal;
• and
• transmitting the analog voice signal to subscriber plain old telephone service (POTS) equipment.

A method of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony comprising:

• receiving an analog voice signal from subscriber plain old telephone service (POTS) equipment representing a telephone call to a location specified by a telephone number;
• converting the analog voice signal of the telephone call to digital voice packets;
• and
• transmitting the digital voice packets to a set top box including a cable modem front end, wherein the digital voice packets will be transmitted to the location by a cable network.