Abstract: In a speech packet switching system, an input speech signal to a speech packet transmitting station is converted to a digital signal to form speech data blocks, which are discriminated to talkspurt blocks and silence blocks, and only the talkspurt speech blocks are packetized and transmitted through a speech packet switching network. In a receiving station, a series of speech packets received in one talkspurt period are temporarily stored in a variance absorbing buffer to compensate for a variance of transmission delay times resulting from the transmission through said speech packet switching network to add variance absorbing times to the speech packets depending on the transmission delay times of the respective speech packets. Then the speech packets are sequentially reproduced.