: True, but I could see there being some friction at first. After all, for the
: last 30 years these have been incomprehensible alien monsters whose only
: goal, as far as the average human citizen knew, was to wipe out every
: human being in existence. If their actual actions didn't damn them enough,
: UNSC war propaganda would've in all likelihood demonized the Covenant
: beyond all belief. Just look at WWII cartoons of the Nazis. And everyone
: 30 and under in the post-war era has grown up knowing nothing but that
: image of the Covenant. I could see many religious groups actually branding
: the Covenant as instruments of the devil. So I can't see it being very
: easy to accept them as people, much less members of your community, even
: with the conscious knowledge that one's species isn't the same thing as
: their political affiliation.

: Cultural exchange and simple interaction between the different species would
: obviously help in that regard, and I think more Covies frequenting the
: space internet would "humanize" them in the eyes of a lot of
: people. As would more media exposure. Could there be TV shows or movies
: with a multi-species cast? Like a sitcom where a guy has a Grunt for a
: roommate? Or a buddy cop movie starring a human and an Elite? Or is it
: still too soon from the war for that kind of thing?

: I could see Grunts and Jackals being the most likely to sign up for acting
: jobs in human productions. A lot of Elites might have some "MUH
: HONOR"-related issues with that sort of thing, but you never know
: with them.

: Good question. What kind of infrastructure is needed to maintain the network?
: Who maintains it? If the tech has spread to the private sector there
: really isn't anything stopping any number of telecommunications companies
: from spreading it outside human space. Unless the aliens don't want it in
: their turf. But the Sangheili don't even have a single government. The
: Arbiter's alliance is the closest thing to one. Would he have a reason to
: deny a human company from setting up a comm node in the Sangheili home
: system? If not there, then any number of the Sangheili colonies that are
: out there.

: Mostly it's just that the threat of Cortana's giant mecha birds will make
: trivial every concern beyond common survival. There's really little room
: to explore the mechanics of these things when everyone's preoccupied with
: fighting for their lives.

At least from what we see in the K5 trilogy, near-instantaneous or instantaneous comms are exclusively a military hardware that costs a bundle. It might come down in price but especially given the unintended consequences of their Spartan-IV program tech leaking I imagine the UNSC would want to keep it close to the chest.