First, a brief explanation of why conventional inter-network techniques don't work on (most of) Rifts Earth:

Land Lines between cities could easily be destroyed by: Coalition forces, rampaging ronsters, other supernatural phenomena, not to mention violent forces of nature... Rifts just isn't tame enough for cable of telephones.

Now that we've established that physical connectivity just isn't possible between physically separate locales, it should seem obvious that cellular communication suffers not only the same problems, but also can be triangulated and destroyed by anyone with enough technology (the CS, silly). True, somebody with enough firepower could establish a chain of cellular towers and defend them viciously, but the number of towers required, and therefore the manpower to defend them, would make even the CS hesitant to waste the effort.

With Sattalite communication out of the question (what sattalites? [shut up]), that only leaves radio communication. Now hold on a minute, you're probably thinking to yourself, I thought he just said a broadcast tower system wouldn't work!

Two things: First off, thanks for actually reading this and not just skipping down to the goodies, I'm glad to see somebody else is interested in the technical part. Second, I mean mobile broadcast stations, all relaying the same signal in an overlapping web. By moving the sources and overlapping the signal, you screw up any attempts to locate one broadcast as separate from the rest, like trying to use sonar in the middle of a jet ski competition.

Such thinking was the beginnig of Radio Networks or RNs. By using encrypted broadcasts requiring specific hardware and software to process (Gates would be proud), storing information on multiple redundant databases, and employing the techniques described in Rifteer # , a RN on Rifts is virtually immune to normal hacking techniques of the 20th and early 21st centuries (not to say that Rifts hackers are dependent on such outmoted techniques), whle still rendered usable to those with permission to access the RN (of course, if you can steal one of the recievers and it's password, then all bets are off).

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* if you don't get it, go read three or four books by William Gibson, then read this again.