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that will stretch from BT Adastral Park in Ipswich, across to the University of Bristol on the opposite coast (see figure 2). Te Hub ‘has purchased quite a few systems from us’ for the first leg, from Ipswich to the University of Cambridge, according to Huttner. ‘BT is very interested in QKD,’ he adds.


Commercial uncertainty Toshiba Research Europe is also involved in the UK Quantum Communications Hub, but Toshiba’s QKD systems are already in use in Japan. ‘Te T12 protocol shows exceptional performance and adaptability to different environments,’ Lucamarini said. ‘Te Genome system in Tokyo is an example of that.’ QKD is used to encrypt real data between the Toshiba Life Science Analysis centre and the Tohoku Medical Megabank. ‘Genome data is one of the best examples of information requiring long-term protection. A genetic problem can travel across generations and the people affected by it have the right to keep the secret. Everlasting protection of confidential data is what QKD can do best.’ Meanwhile, NTT’s DPS-QKD system is now


being operated in a testbed quantum backbone in Tokyo, although Takesue has seen few opportunities elsewhere. ‘In our company, we


simply cannot find any market yet,’ he said. ‘Currently QKD has lots of limitations. Te maximum distribution distance is only 100km, the key rate is low, and it is very expensive. We need to overcome such drawbacks to find customers.’ Quintessence Labs’ Melia likewise sees a


growing number of pilot projects and a steeply increasing research and development effort, but relatively slow commercial adoption. Her company’s QKD activities have been focussed in Australia, including a demonstration in production fibre-optic networks from 2010 to 2014. ‘In the subsequent two years, the working prototype has been modified to improve its reliability and security,’ she explained. Tere’s growing interest in moving from


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DV-QKD to continuous variable QKD (CV- QKD), Melia says, which exploits light’s wave nature to achieve secure key distribution. ‘Information is encoded onto the amplitude and phase quadratures of a coherent laser by the transmitter,’ she said. Although CV-QKD is a much younger technology, it promises superior cost, form factor, power consumption, and performance, Melia claims. On the downside, CV-QKD brings other problems, including


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ensuring security at long distances, and the return of the spectre of eavesdropping by splitting out photons. Overall, uptake is slow because organisations


do not necessarily have the budget, time and expertise to address today’s cyber-security breaches, let alone to think about the future, Melia says. ‘Tere is a parallel lack of awareness of solutions available to address the problem,’ she added. ‘On the other hand, it is true that solutions and the QKD industry as a whole do still need to mature and become truly commercially ready. Many companies will be reluctant to take the risk of being the first adopters.’ Nevertheless, Melia feels that QKD will take off


soon. ‘Waiting until quantum computers are a practical reality will really be too late,’ she stressed. ‘Te public key infrastructure that we use to secure the exchange of keys, and with that international trade, for example, will be broken. But there is an increasing effort in communicating on this issue. I expect that awareness will continue to grow, and in parallel for solutions to mature over the coming years so that we are in a position to address this.’l


Andy Extance is a freelance science writer based in Exeter, UK


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