White Paper on the QTF Back­bone published

The goal of the initia­ti­ve to estab­lish a nati­on­wi­de opti­cal fiber net­work for Quan­tum Tech­no­lo­gies and Time and Fre­quen­cy (T&F) signals is to crea­te an addi­tio­nal, limi­t­ed, and sepa­ra­te fiber back­bone, inde­pen­dent of the public inter­net. This net­work is inten­ded to be available over the coming deca­de for rese­arch, deve­lo­p­ment, and appli­ca­ti­ons in the fields of Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on and T&F dis­tri­bu­ti­on – unaf­fec­ted by the ope­ra­tio­nal requi­re­ments of con­ven­tio­nal data com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on.

The white paper, published in ear­ly June 2025, pres­ents for the first time a dedi­ca­ted, nati­on­wi­de R&D infra­struc­tu­re desi­gned to joint­ly sup­port both Quan­tum Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on and Time and Frequen­cy dis­tri­bu­ti­on – based on dark fibers and spe­ci­al­ly deve­lo­ped hard­ware (refer­red to as the “QTF Back­bone”). The back­bone is plan­ned to be built in four pha­ses over a peri­od of ten years. The goal is to pro­vi­de sca­lable and sus­tainable access for rese­arch insti­tu­ti­ons and indus­try, fos­te­ring the deve­lo­p­ment of a nati­on­wi­de QTF eco­sys­tem and sup­port­ing the tran­si­ti­on from inno­va­ti­on to prac­ti­cal deploy­ment. Click here for more infor­ma­ti­on about the initia­ti­ve.

Source refe­ren­ces: https://www.ptb.de/cms/qtf-de-backbone.html; https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.03998