Preparations

In a world where a network like the Internet had not taken hold yet, communication and distribution were vital and scarcer services for business and commerce. While communication technology did exist, it was not enough to facilitate large-scale mass communication over great distances. Satellite technology, that on Earth allowed for communication from one end of the planet, did not exist in this world. Thus all communication had significant bandwidth and range limitations.

In such circumstances, how was one supposed to conduct extensive international trade over a large number of foreign markets?

That was where the need for communication services allowed one to be able to connect to a market that is extremely distant without necessarily having to invest an impractically huge sum of capital into building one's own network and power base in an entirely different nation.