An isolating repeater and corresponding method for Universal Serial Bus (USB) communications. The isolating repeater includes, on either side of a galvanic isolation barrier, front end circuitry coupled to a pair of external terminals, a full speed (FS) transceiver adapted to drive and receive signals over one or more FS isolation channels, and a high speed (HS) transceiver adapted to drive signals over a one HS isolation channel and receive signals over another HS isolation channel. The front end circuitry encodes received signals corresponding to HS data into two-state signals for transmission over one HS isolation channel, and encodes received signals corresponding to HS signaling into two-state signals for transmission over one or more of the FS isolation channels. The front end circuitry on the other side of the isolation barrier decodes the two-state signals received over the one or more FS isolation channels and the two-state signals received over the HS isolation channel for transmission at its external terminals.