Patent ID: 7154996

Claim:
In a home phone-line network (HPN) having two or more HPN terminals connected via telephone wiring, a method of data transmission between the terminals comprising the steps of: (A) partitioning the spectral bandwidth available to the HPN network into a plain-old-telephone-service (POTS) band, a first data communication band, and a second data communication band such that said POTS band and said first and second data communication bands do not overlap with one another, wherein: a voice communication service supported by the HPN network is adapted to use the POTS band; at least one HPN terminal is adapted to communicate with a communication device located outside of the HPN network using a data communication service that is designed to use the first data communication band, but not the second data communication band; and the HPN terminals are adapted to communicate with one another using the second data communication band; (B) determining whether transmission activity exists within a frequency sub-band of the first data communication band; and (C) allocating the sub-band for the HPN terminals to communicate with one another, if no transmission activity is detected within the sub-band in step (B).