Decentralized base station for reducing bandwidth requirements for communications to and from radio transmitter-receivers in a telecommunications network

An apparatus for reducing bandwidth requirements in a cellular TDMA telecommunications network comprising:

• at least one network control unit;
• at least one base station connected to the at least one network control unit, the at least one base station comprising a multiplexing means and at least one transceiver means;
• means for digitally encoding and compressing speech data to be transmitted to the at least one base station and outputting the digitally encoded and compressed speech data to the at least one network control unit;
• a first communications link between the at least one network control unit and the multiplexing means comprising a high speed link adapted to transmit at a speed of at least 1 Mbps;
• a second communications link between the multiplexing means and the at least one transceiver means comprising a low speed link adapted to transmit at a speed under 1 Mbps;
• and
• the multiplexing means comprising:
• buffering means for buffering the digitally encoded and compressed speech data being transmitted toward the at least one transceiver at a relatively higher transmission rate and retransmitting the buffered speech data at a relatively lower transmission rate;
• and
• buffering means for buffering the digitally encoded and compressed speech data arriving from the at least one transceiver at a relatively lower transmission rate and retransmitting the buffered speech data at a relatively higher transmission rate.