I read two (maybe three) books about a protagonist who communicates with an alien who provides the instructions on how to create a device to teleport. The device is flawed in that it purposefully uses more energy (much more) by taking it from the rotation of the Earth.
The main character and two others continue to fight, commit intrigue, etc. The alien then uses them to recruit other races to do the same thing.
Per gadams999's own answer, the books in question are the duology "Signal to Noise" and "A Signal Shattered" by Eric S. Nylund. Plot summary from the Wikipedia page for "Signal to Noise":
The novel follows Jack Potter, a computer cryptographer tenured at the fictional Academe of Pure and Applied Sciences in Santa Sierra, California (a city assembled from the ruins of San Francisco.) The story details Jack's first encounter with an alien calling himself Wheeler who apparently wishes to trade information with humanity.
Accompanied (for a while) by "gene witch" Zero al Qaseem and data paleontologist Isabel Mirabeau, Jack establishes a corporation based around one of the technologies he was traded by Wheeler, but soon finds that there may be more to his dealings with the alien than he bargained for. Traitorous alliances, deceitful propaganda, and shady business practices are frequent elements of the novel.
