Protocol and transceiver for cordless/cellular telephone service

A communications system comprising a dual mode hand portable transceiver for metropolitan cellular and cordless telecommunications use, forming a secondary station, and a primary station, the primary and secondary stations each comprising respective radio transceiving means for duplex radio communication between the stations, said primary and secondary stations each further comprising:

• a single encoding means for digitizing speech to form transmitter digitized speech signals, and a single decoding means for recovering speech from received digitized speech signals, and
• means for formatting said digitized speech signals to produce a modulation signal according to a selected one of first and second protocols, selection of the protocol being responsive to control by a user of the transceiver, said first protocol using 3 full rate channels per carrier, with each channel carrying signals at substantially 32 kbits per second;
• and said second protocol using 2 half rate duplex channels carrying signals at substantially 11.4 kbits per second, and
• each respective transceiver comprising a single transmitter means for modulating a carrier with said modulation signal at a carrier bit rate of substantially 270.8333 kbits per second, and transmitting the resultant formatted transmitter digitized speech signals over a duplex channel system.