Quantum News Nexus

Back after a long August break. Wish I could say I was in the South of France, but no. I did spend a few days in the South of Wisconsin, where the fromage is pretty good. Anyway, onto a recap of recent news:

D-Wave announced that telecom operator NTT DOCOMO has deployed another quantum application in partnership with D-Wave. The latest application announcement comes almost exactly two years after NTT DOCOMO and D-Wave rolled out an initial network optimization application aimed at reducing base station congestion on the carrier’s wireless networks.

From D-Wave’s press release:

The new application reduced location registration signals generated when devices cross tracking area list (“TA-List”) boundaries by 65.3% at the daily peak while also reducing paging signals by 7.0%, lowering network signaling load and improving operational efficiency. TA-Lists group geographic areas within a mobile network and must be carefully optimized to reduce signaling load while maintaining network performance and connectivity.

The deployment expands DOCOMO’s production use of quantum computing to a broader network optimization challenge. While its first D-Wave-powered application reduced paging signals within tracking areas, the new application optimizes TA-Lists across multiple tracking areas, balancing location registration and paging signals that typically move in opposite directions.

The application reduced the daily peak volume of location registration signals by 65.3% and paging signals by 7.0%. In a representative problem spanning 333 base stations, three TA-Lists and nine tracking areas, it completed the optimization in approximately five minutes, with the results incorporated into DOCOMO’s network planning and day-to-day operations.

This week’s announcement follows news from last month that AT&T had signed an agreement with D-Wave to expand its use of the company’s quantum computing technology. While we have heard a lot about telecom operators collaborating with quantum firms of quantum networking and quantum key distribution technologies, the traditional networks operated by these telecom companies also offer ample opportunity for other quantum applications. Network optimization in particular is a strong match with D-Wave’s quantum annealing systems.

“DOCOMO is showing telecom operators around the world what production quantum adoption looks like: move beyond a single use case and apply the technology to distinct, increasingly complex operational challenges,” said Dr. Alan Baratz, CEO of D-Wave. “Telecom networks are highly complex, resource-constrained environments, and these results demonstrate how D-Wave’s annealing quantum computing technology can help operators improve network performance and efficiency today.”

“With our second production application powered by D-Wave’s hybrid quantum technology, we are applying quantum optimization to a broader and more complex area of network operations,” said Hiroshi Kawakami, Senior Manager of Data Platform Department, NTT DOCOMO, INC. “The application balances two competing network requirements, significantly reducing location registration signaling while also lowering paging signals. Together with our first production application, it demonstrates how quantum computing can help us address multiple aspects of network optimization and use our infrastructure more efficiently.”

Speaking of telecom and quantum, quantum networking firm Qunnect earned a contract from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to advance Qunnect’s Carina quantum entanglement distribution system. While quantum entanglement fidelity can be fussy over fiber, the Carina system has proven itself by anchoring quantum networks on two continents. It is currently operational in New York, Bozeman, Montana, (in partnership with Montana State University), Berlin (in partnership with Deutsche Telekom), and Albuquerque, New Mexico. The company said the DARPA contract provides key funding to help it “advance the next generation of Carina’s polarization compensation nodule, which is the system that continuously analyzes and corrects for the conditions that would otherwise corrupt quantum signals in transit.”

News of the DARPA contract came just after Qunnect announced a partnership with Monarch Quantum, under which the pair will merge Qunnect’s quantum networking tech with MOnarch’s expertise in photonic system engineering, productization, miniaturization, and scalable manufacturing. “Together, the companies will develop modular and manufacturable quantum networking hardware designed for deployment across commercial, industrial, defense, space, and critical infrastructure applications,” the press release said.

Monarch already is playing a key role in Infleqtion’s quantum gravity gradiometer project with NASA, and the company earlier this year raised some new funding.

And, speaking of Infleqtion (see how this works?), the company followed its second quarter earnings report last week by adjusting revenue for that quarter upward from $12.6 million to $13.5 million, and increasing its full-year revenue guidance from around $43M to around $45.1 million. The company said the change reflects a “shift in timing of revenue recognition for two government contracts.”

The earlier revenue number reported last week already represented a record quarterly take by Infleqtion, though the firm has had only two quarterly earnings reports since going public earlier this year. Infleqtion also said last week that its operating loss for Q2 more than tripled year-over-year to $30.6 million, though that is not exactly surprising for a young quantum company investing a lot in advancing its technology.

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Quantum News Nexus is a site from freelance writer and editor Dan O’Shea that covers quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum networking, quantum-safe security, and more. You can find him on X @QuantumNewsGuy and doshea14@gmail.com.