Patent ID: 7587042

Claim:
A method of conditioning a twisted pair telephone line at an intermediate location in the twisted pair line between a central office and a customer premises for high data rate broadband operation, comprising: measuring at said intermediate location first characteristics of a first portion of the twisted pair line extending between the customer premises and the intermediate location by using standard DSL handshaking tones in an upstream frequency spectrum that are transmitted from the customer premises over said first portion of the line while preventing the tones from reaching the central office; measuring at said intermediate location second characteristics of a second portion of the twisted pair line extending between the central office and the intermediate location by using standard DSL handshaking tones in a downstream frequency spectrum that are transmitted from the central office over said second portion of the line while preventing the tones from reaching the customer premises; said upstream and downstream frequency spectrums being different frequency spectrums above voice frequencies and said measuring being performed automatically; equalizing at said intermediate location the first and second portions of the twisted pair line by providing first and second gains to upstream and downstream signals to overcome line attenuation in said upstream and said downstream frequency spectrums, respectively; and compensating the twisted pair line at said intermediate location for the effects of group delay.