The combination of narrowband applications with broadband transport may be enabled with a tri-level nodal communications architecture including a call control node having both switching intelligence and narrowband switching fabric, a plurality of connection control nodes having broadband switching fabric and an intermediate node for interworking between the call control node and the plurality of connection control nodes. The intermediate node includes a database providing an indication of which format(s) of multiple formats a given connection control node uses. When an incoming communication arrives to/from a specific connection control node, the database is consulted to ascertain the corresponding particular format(s) used by that specific connection control node. Accordingly, the incoming communication may be translated responsive to the ascertained particular format(s).