Techniques are presented herein to provide tandem-free operation between two wireless terminals through two otherwise incompatible wireless networks. Specifically, embodiments provide tandem-free operation between a wireless terminal [104] communicating through a continuous transmission (CTX) wireless channel [102] to a wireless terminal [124] communicating through a discontinuous transmission (DTX) wireless channel [122]. In a first aspect, inactive speech frames are translated between DTX and CTX formats [410 and 430]. In a second aspect, each wireless terminal includes an active speech decoder [206 and 216] that is compatible with the active speech encoder [204 and 214] on the opposite end of the mobile-to-mobile connection.