GSMA, IBM, and Vodafone Establish Post-Quantum Telco Network Taskforce

The GSMA announced the formation of the GSMA Post-Quantum Telco Network Taskforce, with IBM and Vodafone as initial members. It is expected to help define policy, regulation, and operator business processes for the enhanced protection of telecommunications in the future of advanced quantum computing.

Unlike today’s computers that rely on bits for calculation, quantum computers harness the exponential power of quantum bits (qubits). This can be a complicated, simultaneous mix of 1s and 0s, creating the potential to solve extremely complex problems that challenge even the most powerful supercomputers today. The Taskforce will help define requirements, identify dependencies and create the roadmap to implement quantum-safe networking, mitigating the risks associated with future, more-powerful quantum computers.

Without quantum-safe controls in place, sensitive information such as confidential business information and consumer data could be at risk from attackers who harvest present-day data for later decryption. The World Economic Forum recently estimated that more than 20 billion digital devices will need to be either upgraded or replaced in the next 10-20 years to use the new forms of quantum-safe encrypted communication.

“The GSMA Taskforce’s goal is to bring together leading global communication services providers with experts from IBM, Vodafone, and other operators and ecosystem partners to understand and implement quantum-safe technology. By working together to establish consistent policies, we can define quantum-safe approaches that protect critical infrastructure and customer data, complementing our ongoing security efforts to increase resiliency in future networks,“ said Alex Sinclair, the GSMA’s Chief Technology Officer.

To address the challenges presented by emerging quantum technology, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announced in July 2022 that it had chosen the first four post-quantum cryptography algorithms to be standardized for cybersecurity in the quantum computing era. These algorithms are designed to rely on the computational difficulty of problems from the mathematical areas of lattices, isogenies, hash functions, and multivariate equations, and protect today’s systems and data from future quantum computers. IBM, a leader in cryptography and pioneer in quantum technology - with the world’s largest fleet of cloud-accessible quantum computers - contributed to the development of three of NIST’s four chosen post-quantum algorithms.