Today marks the launch of a pilot project, OPENQKD, that will install a test quantum communication infrastructure in several European countries. The IMDEA Software Institute will participate in the recently funded EU project OPENQKD by providing physical infrastructure and the expertise of personnel of the REDIMadrid innitiative, managed by the Institute. The whole consortium is composed by 38 members, 4 of them from Spain.

Classical and quantum communications will jointly ensure the ICT needs of European governments, service industries (e.g. health, finance), businesses and citizens, even in the presence of quantum computers, or other sophisticated algorithmic attacks against public key infrastructures.

The Project mission is the establishment of QKD-based secure communication as a well-accepted, robust and reliable technology instrumental for securing traditional industries and vertical application sectors, and to prepare the deployment of Europe-wide QKD-based infrastructure in future.

The high level objetives are: raising the awareness of the maturity of QKD; working with end-users to test and validate end-to-end security for businesses and industry sectors based on QKD; advancing QKD systems and QKD-based secure-communication solutions to meet market demands in terms of specifications, standards & certification; and finaly, provide several open test facilities to encourage the development of new QKD-based applications by a wide community.

REDIMadrid is deploying a research network over its own infrastructure. The aim is to avoid a hired capacity network, with new dark-fiber laid out and used exclusively for research activities.

In this context, REDIMadrid will facilitate that quantum lambdas can coexist with lambdas of research traffic, so, it will be possible to verify how the solution works in a real environment.

To achieve its ambitious goals, the OPENQKD project will last three years and have a budget of €15 million funded under H2020-EU.2.1.1. This project has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the grant agreement no. 857156.

View the press release.