uld necessarily be more like transmitting an internet archive with “messages in a bottle” between systems every so often than any remotely real-time communication. Pairs of transceivers can be set up in other solar systems as well, thus forming a network connecting all the nearby stars.
The amount of amplification that can be achieved is quite large; as this New Yorker article points out, one particular frequency that SETI has identified as interesting could be enhanced by a factor of up to 1.3 quadrillion using gravitational lensing. This is powerful enough to open up the possibility of detecting signals across intergalactic distances. Of course, any radio transmission would be distorted, and an alien transmission would be much harder to reconstruct than a message from one of our own transceivers we know the position of (and thus can calculate precisely how to adjust for the distortion), but the idea that such a feat may be possible with near-future technology is certainly quite interesting.
Indeed, after considering all these possibilities, the sun’s gravitational lensing effect appears to be one of the greatest natural endowments of our solar system as far as human use is concerned. Any alien civilization in any star system would have the same advantage, and the same techniques discussed here for human use in the future may already be in use by any aliens that may be out there. Aliens might be sending transmissions to other solar systems (including our own) that are designed to be receive using gravitational lensing, perhaps intended for only a more advanced civilization to receive, or because they assume anyone they would want to talk to would be using it, or because of convenience for them if they already have such transceivers or telescopes.
The many possibilities of using gravitational lensing for astronomical observation and transmitting information, along with the implications for human scientific discovery and even space colonization, is an area that to my knowledge is hardly ever explored in science fiction or speculation about our real-world future. Despite that, the chances that it will prove important in the real world or in a near-future-level hard science fiction setting are very high, providing very fertile ground for visionaries to speculate on the future and create hard-science fiction stories, worldbuilding projects, and other works of art.