A PDH traffic interface (112) receives PDH channel signals from a plurality of PDH channels and a bit-pipe interface (118) receives bit-pipe traffic transported as a packet data stream.

A data transmitter for such a head-end station also includes a control processor (12'), a control buffer (13', 14') and a traffic interface (15').

A method includes multicasting by a server center of streaming interactive video/audio streams to multiple destinations via an outbound Internet traffic interface.