Germany’s QuNET Receives €165 Million to Establish Quantum Communications Infrastructure

(Optics.org) Germany’s QuNET, “a major initiative for a quantum network impervious to eavesdropping”, is to receive a total of €165 million in funding. The primary objective of QuNET is secure communications between governmental organizations in Germany. The planned seven-year project will also serve as a central platform for the establishment of a German Quantum Communications infrastructure and will play a role in building a quantum internet.
At the broader European level, the German federal government and partners in the QuNET consortium are working to create a secure European data space. In the first phase alone the initiative will receive approximately €25 million over the coming two years.
To meet this challenge Fraunhofer and its institutes for Telecommunications, Heinrich Hertz Institute, and Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF) are partnering with the German Aerospace Center and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light.