Many feel that data services will compel both rural and urban cable systems to form a national communication network. Concurrence of video and data services can be achieved through establishment of CATV data transmission standards. The characteristics of data transmission, including channel capacity, bandwidth, signal to noise ratio, modulation, error rate, error detection and encoding methods are investigated, a distributed processing complex supporting multiple service offerings is detailed and finally, a full set of quantitative parameters for CATV data transmission is recommended.