A Flexible Communications System for Satellite News Gathering

Satellite news gathering (SNG) requires a great deal of coordination among diverse parties. Voice and data. communications traffic is gernerated in support of SNG operations which is technical, programmatic, and administrative in nature. The origin, routing destination, and duration of this traffic cannot be fully pre-planned. Historically, SNG vehicles have not had the ability to directly dial, without any operator intervention, into the public telephone switched network: (PTSN), nor the ability to receive calls directly dialed from anywhere. The system described here, however, does allow the operators of ENS vehicles to complete and receive unattended direct-dial communications both intra-network: and also to and from telephones and data sets connected to the PTSN.