Start of Danish Quan­tum Net­work

QKD Net­work con­nects ten Sites for quan­tum-secu­re Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on:

With the incre­asing inter­con­nec­ted­ness of our world, the exch­an­ge of vast amounts of data, and the gro­wing thre­at to cri­ti­cal infra­struc­tu­re, the secu­ri­ty of digi­tal sys­tems is beco­ming ever more important. At the same time, many of today’s encryp­ti­on methods are expec­ted to face long-term chal­lenges due to the deve­lo­p­ment of powerful Quan­tum Com­pu­ters. This is whe­re Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on comes into play. With the com­mis­sio­ning of its new Quan­tum Net­work in ear­ly July 2026, Den­mark has taken an important step toward quan­tum-secu­re com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on. The net­work is based on Quan­tum Key Dis­tri­bu­ti­on (QKD) and will in the future con­nect ten sites. In QKD, secret cryp­to­gra­phic keys are gene­ra­ted and exch­an­ged bet­ween sen­der and recei­ver using the Quan­tum Sta­tes of sin­gle pho­tons. Due to the laws of Quan­tum Phy­sics, any attempt at eaves­drop­ping can be detec­ted imme­dia­te­ly. This makes QKD a foun­da­ti­on for com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on sys­tems that can main­tain a high level of secu­ri­ty even in the era of powerful Quan­tum Com­pu­ters.

The net­work was deve­lo­ped within the frame­work of the Danish Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on Infra­struc­tu­re (QCI.DK) pro­ject. The ten con­nec­ted sites include, among others, the Danish Minis­try of For­eign Affairs, the Minis­try of Defence, the Minis­try of Indus­try, Busi­ness and Finan­cial Affairs, and the Minis­try of Hig­her Edu­ca­ti­on and Sci­ence. With the new quan­tum-secu­re com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on net­work, Den­mark is taking an important step toward pro­tec­ting sen­si­ti­ve com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons – both for cur­rent requi­re­ments and with regard to future Quan­tum Com­pu­ters. The sys­tem is based on Con­ti­nuous-Varia­ble Quan­tum Key Dis­tri­bu­ti­on (CV-QKD), a vari­ant of QKD that is par­ti­cu­lar­ly well sui­ted for inte­gra­ti­on into exis­ting fib­re-optic infra­struc­tures. As a result, QKD can in many cases be imple­men­ted wit­hout fun­da­men­tal chan­ges to exis­ting net­work archi­tec­tures.

Within the frame­work of the Euro­pean initia­ti­ve Euro­pean Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on Infra­struc­tu­re (Euro­QCI), a quan­tum-secu­re com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on net­work is to be estab­lished bet­ween EU Mem­ber Sta­tes in the coming years. Initi­al­ly, secu­re quan­tum links bet­ween Den­mark and Swe­den as well as Pol­and are plan­ned. With the­se first inter­na­tio­nal con­nec­tions, the new Danish QKD net­work marks an important step toward a Euro­pe-wide Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on Infra­struc­tu­re. It thus forms a key foun­da­ti­on for the gra­du­al deve­lo­p­ment of a resi­li­ent, cross-bor­der net­work for quan­tum-secu­re com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on in Euro­pe. Fur­ther infor­ma­ti­on on the Danish Quan­tum Commu­ni­ca­ti­on Net­work can be found here.

 

Source refe­rence: https://www.dtu.dk/english/news/all-news/new-quantum-communication-network-protects-data-now-and-in-the-future?id=83129c45-491d-4a56-beea-62c806f72bb9