Digital signals provided by a repeater connected to a plurality of clients by unshielded twisted wire pairs, are converted to analog signals which become degraded during transmission through the wires. Clients convert the degraded analog signals to digital signals. Digital signal phases are coarsely adjusted to have assumed zero crossing times coincide in-time with a clock signal zero crossing. Signal polarity, and the polarity of any change, is determined at the assumed zero crossing times of the digital signals. Pre-cursor and post-cursor responses, resulting from signal degradation, are respectively inhibited by a feed forward and a decision feedback equalizer. The time duration of post-cursor response is further inhibited by a high pass filter and a tail canceller. Phase adjustments are made, after response inhibition, by determining the polarity, and the polarity of any change, at the assumed zero crossing times. Before phase adjustments are made, a phase offset is provided in order to compensate for phase degradations introduced by the unshielded twisted wire pairs.