communication

[lee]

As a merchant, I would like to know the prices of goods at a place before I get there, and I might like to get other news while flying around.

As a seller or buyer on a station or planet, I would like to advertise my prices to attract buyers/sellers.

It only needs a means to communicate, like radio waves and radios. Or something like an internet.

How would you maintain communication with systems far away? Radio waves are too slow ...

You would place communication relay satellites at jump points. They would record information and then jump to the other system to transmit it. Place a satellite at each end of a jump point and synchronize their jumps, have communication protocols in place that can deal with short interruptions (during the jump), and you have continuous and pretty much uninterrupted communication throughout the whole universe --- with inevitable delays, though.

Now if players can put their own satellites in place ...