A method and apparatus for communicating multi-tone modulated upstream and downstream channels of communication data between a pair of communication devices utilizing a common set of tones for the upstream and downstream channels. The pair of communication devices each include a digital stage configured to assign mutually orthogonal code sequences for encoding and decoding the upstream and downstream channel respectively. The transmit path of the digital stage of each communication device is configured to generate redundancy in the associated communication data in either the time or frequency domain and to encode the redundant communication data with the mutually orthogonal code sequence prior to transmission thereby allowing the communication devices to share a common frequency spectrum of a communication medium for the upstream and downstream communication channels.