When commercial fibres carries entangled photons, quantum states can be reconstructed kilometres apart, offering a glimpse at scalable quantum communication beyond laboratories.
Researchers at Deutsche Telekom’s T-Labs and Qunnect have demonstrated quantum teleportation over a 30-kilometer commercial fibre network in Berlin. The trial employed commercially available entanglement distribution hardware alongside classical data traffic, achieving an average teleportation fidelity of 90 percent and a peak of 95 percent.
The experiment recreated identical quantum states at distant nodes using entangled photons rather than transmitting physical particles. Qunnect’s platform integrated an entanglement generator and a polarization compensation system to counter environmental noise in buried and aerial fibre. Teleported qubits operated at 795 nanometres, a wavelength compatible with neutral-atom quantum computers, atomic clocks, and other quantum sensors.
This demonstration shows that quantum teleportation can function in real-world telecom networks with high fidelity, without dedicated laboratory setups. Integrating teleportation capabilities into existing infrastructure provides deterministic quantum state transfer while coexisting with conventional data traffic.
Applications include distributed quantum computing, secure cloud-based quantum services, and networks of high-precision quantum sensors. Future multi-node teleportation trials aim to expand the distance and complexity of quantum state transfer across metropolitan networks, laying the groundwork for practical quantum communication and data centre interconnectivity.
The approach enables scalable and reliable deployment of quantum networking protocols. By using metro-scale fibre networks, operators can connect distributed quantum systems, support long-distance quantum communication, and maintain high data integrity.
Abdu Mudesir, Board Member for Product and Technology, Deutsche Telekom, said, “In Berlin we have now proven that quantum information can be transmitted over 30 kilometres of commercial fibre optics outside of a laboratory, laying the foundation for networking quantum computers and secure communication.”
