We present in this paper a unified approach to the crosstalk interference problem arising in PCM transmission on paired cables. For bipolar signaling, and three types of commonly used channel shaping, viz., cosine, raised cosine, and Gaussian, we present the minimum average near-end crosstalk (NEXT) and far-end crosstalk (FEXT) loss requirements at any transmission rate as a function of repeater spacing and number of interfering pairs so as to meet a desired error rate objective. This will aid in indicating if new cables need to be developed for a proposed rate of transmission or, for a given cable, the error margin available for degradations other than crosstalk can be readily determined. Extension to other coding schemes is indicated, and crosstalk compatibility is examined for mixed T systems, such as T1 , T1C , and T2 . Graphical results are presented to readily aid in system design of any T carrier with repeater spacings up to 70 dB.