The present invention comprises a method of communicating background noise comprising the steps of transmitting background noise, blanking subsequent background noise data rate frames used to communicate the background noise, receiving the background noise and updating the background noise. In another embodiment, the present invention comprises an apparatus for communicating background noise comprising a vocoder, at least one smart blanking apparatus operably connected to the vocoder, a de-jitter buffer operably connected to the smart blanker; and a network stack operably connected to the input of the de-jitter buffer and the an output of the smart blanking apparatus.