BT, Toshiba and Equinix Link UK Data Centres with Quantum-Secure Network
ISP BT and partner Toshiba have today announced that they’ve worked with Equinix to achieve the UK’s “first data centre to data centre connection” using their new quantum-secured metro fibre optic network, which they claim will provide businesses that use these facilities with the ability to “protect their data against future sophisticated quantum attacks“.
Just to recap. BT and Toshiba have spent years developing a quantum-secure network that can even harness Openreach’s “standard” fibre optic infrastructure. Such connections are intended to ensure that, should such a communication be intercepted along the way, the sender will be able to tell that the link has been tampered with, and the stolen photons cannot then be used as part of the key, thus rendering the data stream itself incomprehensible to a hacker.
The latest development is that the pair are now providing their quantum secure connectivity at two prime colocation Equinix data centres, located in London’s Canary Wharf and Slough. Customers using the Equinix data centres will thus be able to connect to BT and Toshiba’s quantum-secured metro network and trial the transmission of data, protected using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD).
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Howard Watson, Chief Security and Networks Officer at BT Group, said:
“Our partnership with Toshiba has already seen us build the world’s first commercial trial of a quantum-secured metro network in London and today marks an important milestone in our journey towards accelerating the commercialisation of quantum-secure connectivity. With quantum technologies moving at an incredible speed, we continue to explore and test the practical technologies emerging from this highly innovative field to secure the UK’s digital infrastructure against future quantum threats”.
Bruce Owen, Managing Director UK at Equinix, said:
“Equinix is committed to making investments in futureproof secure connectivity and hosting, for our customers today and well into the future. We understand just how complex today’s digital challenges can be, which is why we are pioneering the democratisation of quantum secure communications, making it accessible as a service to thousands of businesses worldwide. This collaboration with BT Group and Toshiba is a welcome opportunity to enhance our customers’ access to innovation that will build resiliency in the quantum computing era.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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See how long it takes for someone to complain about BT doing this when they should be delivering full fibre to a specific address or moving to symmetrical products or releasing XGSPON.
Correct
They should focus on their Full Fibre Rollout instead
You may think he’s joking but he isn’t.
Josh, why not grab a spade and help if you think everyone at BT Group should be doing full fibre build? You’ll be able as much use in the project as the folks that worked on this one.
Still upset over being in London and only having Community Fibre and Virgin Media I guess?
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/review/reviews/7951/
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/07/data-suggests-uk-broadband-isp-and-tv-bundles-are-growing.html#comment-287805
Some fibre desert.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2024/08/virgin-media-and-nexfibre-add-11000-homes-to-fttp-in-huddersfield.html#comment-310814
Quality level of entitlement when full fibre coverage hits 70% and a guy with symmetrical 3 Gbit complains over only having that and gigabit cable as options right now as some others have access to multiple.
I’ve access to the four largest full fibre networks in the country. A very few have access to 5 or 6 networks total. Sorry if living in London didn’t mean everyone piling in to make sure everywhere in the entire GLA were covered by 20 different operators before anywhere else saw build. Have to make do with gigabit for £30 and the enormous transport and other investments.
“which they claim will provide businesses that use these facilities with the ability to “protect their data against future sophisticated quantum attacks“”
Lets save this and review the ‘claim’ in 10 years for truth, and I hope they’ve more than a single cable and route between the endpoints….
Do you understand the nature of quantum attacks? They’re trying to defend against service interruptions.
They don’t know if it will work at all but they have it.
*not* trying to prevent service interruptions.
cryptography is key to everything.. especially is communications. Existing techniques of end to end encryption is underthreat when you consider NPU are now on the verge of sitting inside everybodys pciex slot and can intercept data before it even gets to the data/transport layers, now OSs can read data on the bus to render out to the gpu.. way before it even hits TLS stage for routing, so thinking in those terms, cheaper compute, etc you need to have full root of trust in your link/comms. QKD AND Quantum Safe Cryptography are a move in that direction.