Abstract: Errors or failures in a transmission system (10) can be accurately predicted by a system (18) which processes error or failure data collected by the transmission system during uniform intervals to yield data indicative of the errors or failures during each of a plurality of non-uniform, overlapping intervals. The errors or failures measured during the non-uniform intervals are selectively weighted and summed within a neural network (22), trained with historical error or failure data, to yield a set of predictions, each representing the predicted number of errors or failures during each non-uniform interval. The predictions from the neural network (22) are then thresholded by a control unit (24) and used to raise an alarm which signals the possibility of error or failure in the transmission system.