Aethernet
Aethernet transmits information across interstellar distances through Aether. A disturbance in Aether occurs everywhere at once: a property called nonlocality. Signals also lose almost no strength with distance, making Aether an ideal transmission medium.
That reach creates a shared problem. Everyone in Elysium uses the same signal space, and distant transmissions do not fade enough to stop competing with local ones. Too much traffic can overwhelm the network.
The Queen’s Guard
Early telecom companies competed to make their transmissions heard over the congestion. Each built more powerful transmitters and developed multiplexing algorithms to carry more signals through the crowded bands. These efforts left everyone competing for capacity in an increasingly saturated network. Pascalia Wells, then CEO of NiteLife, was famously reported to have remarked that “screaming into the void had never been such an exercise in futility before people started receiving answers.”
The Megas controlling the galaxy eventually created the Queen’s Guard to regulate access. Each major player contributed part of the agency’s funding, but they bitterly disputed how much each should pay. Those arguments led to the Fifth Year Calculations: negotiations held twice a decade, accompanied by extensive backroom dealings and tax fraud.
Once the levies were settled, the Guard began charging enormous fees for licences to use Aethernet frequency bands. Under this arrangement, both the price and power of transmitters soon fell far enough for manufacturers to market them to individual pilots.
The enormous multiplexing systems built during the earlier competition were immediately outlawed. They became prized targets for pirates and hackers, whom the Queen’s Guard works tirelessly to exterminate.