Deutsche Telekom and AIT Take the Lead on Europe’s Quantum Network Plans

The European Commission has handed Deutsche Telekom and Austria’s AIT the job of coordinating the next stage of Europe’s quantum communication network. Deutsche Telekom will lead a project called PETRUS2, and AIT will lead a parallel one called HarmoniQCI. Both are planning and coordination efforts rather than network construction.

PETRUS2 and HarmoniQCI split the work

According to the July 14 press release, PETRUS2 handles strategy and coordination. It builds on an earlier project, PETRUS, and is meant to align national and European efforts and prepare for future large-scale deployments, including cross-border quantum key distribution networks. Quantum key distribution, or QKD, uses the physics of light particles to share encryption keys in a way that exposes any eavesdropper, and it is the core technology behind the planned EuroQCI, the EU’s secure quantum communication infrastructure. Deutsche Telekom is running PETRUS2 with Thales, AIT, Airbus, and SES.

HarmoniQCI takes on a less glamorous but necessary job: standardization and interoperability. For a network stitched together from different vendors and countries to work, the pieces have to agree on common technical frameworks. AIT’s project aims to set those standards and align them with European policy, which the partners argue is what will let an industrial base form around future quantum networks.

Europe is planning the network before building it

These are Coordination and Support Actions, the EU’s term for groundwork. They fund planning, standards, and stakeholder alignment, as opposed to building of a network or any new hardware. So the news is that Europe is organizing how it will build EuroQCI, not that it has built more of it.

The release didn’t disclose funding amounts or timelines for either project. The two teams say they will run joint workshops and coordinate their input into European roadmaps. It continues a working relationship between Deutsche Telekom and AIT that already spans earlier EU quantum projects, with AIT supplying the quantum optics and QKD expertise and Deutsche Telekom the network and deployment side.