The oldest and most widespread communications technology still in regular use is radio. Every habitat and world inhabited by transhumanity is awash in radio traffic, with humans, machines, and uplifts all constantly communicating with one another. The smallest radios are no larger than a spec of dust and have a range of no more than 20 meters, while the largest are the size of a truck and have a range of many thousands of miles. Radios large and small are ubiquitous and almost all devices contain at least short-range radios so they may interact with the mesh. Most morphs are equipped with basic Mesh Inserts that include an implanted radio.
Neutrinos are particles that can pass through any solid matter with ease and are impossible to block. As a result, they make an ideal medium for communications.Unfortunately, they are also easy to intercept. Even a tight beam of neutrinos sent between two locations can be intercepted simply by placing another receiver behind the location the broadcaster is sending to. Neutrino communicators require a large power plant to power the high energy particle interactions required to generate the neutrino broadcast. Neutrino receivers are also relatively large, with the smallest occupying 100 cubic meters. In most cases, neutrino communicators are designed to broadcast neutrinos in all directions, though tight-beam transmissions are also possible. Quite often neutrino communications take advantage of quantum farcasting for security.
Quantum farcasters are special computers designed to protect a communications channel (such as fiberoptic, radio, laser/microwave, or neutrino) with unbreakable encryption. To function, two or more quantum farcaster computers must first be entangled together (on a quantum level) in the same physical location. The farcasters may then be separated, at which point they may continue to exchange encrypted data via quantum teleportation. This data exchange requires a standard communications link (fiberoptic, radio, laser/microwave, or neutrino), and so is limited by the speed of light, but it is a high bandwidth form of communications. The quantum encryption used by these entangled farcasters is unbreakable, and any attempted interception is immediately detected and neutralized. A quantum farcaster may not be used to securely communicate with any farcasters other than the ones it is entangled with. Because it is exceptionally safe and secure, quantum farcasting via neutrino communications is the primary means of both long-distance communication between habitats and Egocasting. The neutrino signal cannot be blocked and it can only be decrypted if a character has access to the computer that is sending or receiving the signal.
The rarest form of communications is quantum entangled (QE) communication. QE communication is instantaneous and works over any distance, but is also very limited. QE communication requires pairs of entangled particles known as qubits. To use QE, large number of pairs of qubits are created and then separated from each other. Millions of these separated
pairs of particles are stored in special containers known as qubit reservoirs. If two QE communicators each have a qubit reservoir containing qubits that are each entangled with qubits in the other communicator’s qubit reservoir, then characters can use the two QE communicators to commutate with one another instantaneously. Characters can use QE to instantly communicate between any two locations, even if one character is in the solar system and the other has passed through a Pandora gate and is standing on a planet 500 light years away. Each bit of data transmitted between these two QE comms uses up one qubit. Once all of the qubits are used up, the two QE comms can no longer communicate with each other until they each get a new batch of entangled qubits. Qubits are expensive to produce, contain, and transport, making this an exceedingly expensive form of communication. As a result, extremely high bandwidth communications like full sensory AR and egocasting cannot be performed using QE communication.