glitterboy2098 wrote:the robot phone obviously used wireless tech, since it was mobile, but presumably the network it was on was made to be very secure. [...]
Or it was simply incapable of broadcasting strongly enough to penetrate the reinforced hypercarbon hull skin of the SDF-1. With all the metal and/or pseudometallic composite in the ship's structure, I'd imagine that providing cell phone signal on it would be rather impractical... you'd need a lot of low-powered signal stations to cope with reflection and interference due both to military transmissions and other signal sources, which would make it a heck of a lot cheaper to just say "Hey, just stick to payphones guys".
(I'm speaking from the heart there, I live in a bad signal area as a result of disruptive interference from government-owned broadcasting hardware and my cell carrier gave me a femtocell to compensate for it.)
keir451 wrote:Actually, it wasn't so much that they were deliberately broadcasting TV sognals outside the hull of the ship, but that the signals proably rode a detectable frequency that the Zents picked up on.
And there was an awful lot of static and distortion in the signal when they were receiving it from just a couple minutes away...
Gryphon wrote:Suppose that as far back as XXXX (yes, I meant to be ambiguous here) there is an alternate world split off, and the resulting Robotech timeline never saw a dissemination of the basic technology that powers these civilian technologies? [...]
It's possible... I suppose it depends chiefly on how far back the Global War really goes, and how bitterly contested it was.