re: And the alternatives are...?
Did I once mention hypra-dimensional wormhole subspace communications or even titanium soup cans with really long strings made of carbon-60 nanotubic diamonoids? Nope.
By advanced I was thinking of lasers and maybe other things higher up in the known-to-us physics electromagnetic spectrum. Heck, there was a paper not too long ago that discussed ETI using really big shadow puppets to put in front of their suns to be detected by their celestial neighbors. Granted, that would involve a serious space infrastructure, but not Star Wars type pseudo-technology.
See here:
http://www.yeconline.ca/122.html
And here:
http://www.coseti.org
