Patent ID: 8320355

Claim:
A method comprising: broadcasting a feedback message in a downlink channel before an end of a selected frame of an uplink channel, the feedback message comprising information indicative of data devices that successfully sent a data reservation request by contention, minislot and slot assignment information of voice devices in a frame immediately subsequent to the selected frame, minislot and slot assignment information of data devices in the frame immediately subsequent to the selected frame, information responsive to the data reservation request, and a permission probability, the data devices adapted to utilize information comprised in the feedback message in making data reservation requests in frames subsequent to the selected frame, the feedback message responsive to a first slot being assigned responsive to a voice reservation request in the selected frame, the uplink channel comprising a plurality of frames, each frame comprising a first selectable count of minislots and a second selectable count of slots, the voice reservation request contained in a first selected minislot of the selected frame of the uplink channel when a voice transmission is ready to be sent, the voice reservation request adapted to cause an assignment of the first slot to the voice transmission in a frame that is subsequent to the selected frame, the data reservation request that is received contained in a second selected minislot of the selected frame when the second selected minislot is available in the selected frame and when data is ready to be sent, the data reservation request adapted to cause an assignment of a slot to transmit data in another frame that is subsequent to the selected frame, the data reservation request adapted to contend with other data reservation requests for the second selected minislot based on a contention algorithm, wherein the feedback message is adapted to change a frame assignment initially used to transmit background noise of the voice transmission responsive to a determination to use a silence compression during a speech silence in the voice transmission, wherein the speech silence is automatically detected via a voice activity detector.