A communication network made up of distributed switching stations controlled by a network control center. The distributed switches communicate with each other over long haul links and locally with users over short haul communication channels to user switches. Each user switch interfaces a distributed switch to a plurality of individual users. Communication is carried out in a Demand Assigned Multiple Access fashion with the distributed switches communicating with differential inbound and outbound data frame lengths. The outbound frames being shorter and in time division multiplexed (TDM) format. The inbound data frames from the user switches are longer and in time division multiple access (TDMA) format.