The correct answer is that they are not transporting matter. Its all about how they put a spin on it.

And long distance relationships wouldn't be so ... long distance.

I imagine the actual fruition of this type of technology wouldn't be far off from what happened in The Sixth Day, that awful Schwarzenegger movie. Not so much that they were going through the physical act of cloning people in the movie, but rather that the bad guys were all cloned and not real people.

When Arnold runs into his clone, there seems to be a bit of mental angst and then acceptance when Arnold 2 figures out that he isn't actually the real Arnold (clone copies are identified by little dots under eyelid).

I'm babbling, but brought that up in response to the idea that what comes out the other end of the transporter isn't actually the "real" thing, but a replicated version. That would be a really weird thing, but if there weren't any side effects, I would totally do it.

Wouldn't you be a tad worried about say, the cable getting cut, data corrution, power cut....TCP/humanity.

I'd be more worried that I was being utterly destroyed, atom by atom. Whether a copy was constructed somewhere else would be beside the point. That's not a side effect, it's a feature!

I believe that the no cloning theorem may prevent us from using quantum entanglement as communication.

but, uh, I only know of this because I stumbled upon it on Wikipedia, and I'm uncharacteristically scared by the big words that I used in that sentence and the complicated math that they stand for.

[edit: typo hate]

It's all beyond me but I've got a mate that gets to spend some time at CERN for his uni course, he might have a better idea.

I'm in way over my depth. But I believe it would allow communication IF that communication were one-way only, and one-time only.

they used magic?

What if you either didn't have one to begin with, or had sold it off cheaply several years ago?

Does this mean that after using a transporter everyone would be Enron Executives?

Eeeeau.

The first transporter scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Oh, and the first baboon in The Fly (1986).

Not to worry, they'll use Microsoft Windows.:)

Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Show me a man who'll use a Microsoft teleporter and I'll show you a man who is tired of life.

The "Blue Screen Of Death" lives up to its name.