Korean Carriers SK Telecom, KT and LG U+ Working on Quantum Cryptography

(KoreaGoongangDaily) KT Economics and Management Research Institute expects the accumulated damages from IoT hacking in the Korean market to reach 26.7 trillion won ($22.2 billion) by 2030. Mobile carriers are increasingly focusing on keeping their networks safe and secure.
SK Telecom, Korea’s largest carrier, announced in March that it will embed quantum cryptography technologies in its new 5G network. “Think of data transfer on existing telecommunications network as exchanging balls. If a third person steals the ball in the process, makes a copy of the ball and delivers the copied version to the end receiver, it is hard to notice whether the ball has been stolen or not,” a spokesperson from SK Telecom said. “But with quantum cryptography, it’s like delivering bubbles – even a touch from a third person will distort the data, making it impossible for the third person to steal or copy it.”
The carrier also adopted IDQ’s quantum key distribution technology on data transfer between Seoul and Daejeon, one of the major network connections in the country handling heavy data traffic, in April. Quantum key distribution enables two parties to produce a shared random secret key known only to them. The partnership with IDQ is based on a $65 million investment SK Telecom made into IDQ in February last year.
Other Korean carriers – KT and LG U+ – are also working on quantum cryptography.