E1 - technical definition

A 2.048 Mbps point-to-point dedicated, digital circuit provided by the telephone companies in Europe. E1 is the European counterpart of the North American T1 line, which transmits at 1.544 Mbps, and E1 and T1 lines can be interconnected for international use. E2 through E5 lines provide multiple E1 channels.

An E1 line uses two wire pairs (one for transmit, one for receive) and time division multiplexing (TDM) to interleave 32 64-Kbps voice or data channels. See DS and T1.