Quantum computing is moving from long-term promise to practical telecom experimentation, writes quantum software company Classiq. As operators tackle complex optimisation, forecasting and security challenges, early pilots are helping build the expertise and competitive advantage needed for the quantum era.
For nearly five decades, telecommunications companies have gone through repeated cycles of planning and upgrades from laying nationwide fiber in the 1980s and 1990s, to redesigning core networks for mobile broadband in the 2000s, to densifying radio access networks for 4G and 5G in the last decade. Every new generation of mobile networks has required telecom companies to rethink network architecture, investment strategies and service models.
Today, another technology has entered the mix: quantum computing. And despite a perception that quantum is still future-tech, leading telecom operators are already running trials that show the time to experiment is now. Any telecom company that isn’t actively considering its quantum strategy is behind.
Quantum is more than Q-day
Much of the public conversation about quantum in telecom has centered on “Q-day,” the inflection point when large quantum computers become powerful enough to break classical encryption. That is a real and urgent issue, especially with migration paths now in place. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized the first wave of post-quantum cryptography standards in August 2024 and security teams are already mapping timelines for adoption. But reducing quantum to security alone is far too narrow.
For telecom carriers, quantum has broader and nearer-term relevance. Optimization, forecasting and anomaly detection problems dominate the day-to-day life of a carrier. Many of these problems grow exponentially with scale, making them hard to solve with classical tools. Hybrid quantum-classical methods provide a new path forward where quantum machines take on the heaviest computational tasks while classical systems handle the rest.
What the early movers are doing
This is not theory. Telecom companies are already conducting real-world experiments. Comcast recently announced a new quantum lab that will explore how quantum computing can transform the management and delivery of internet connectivity. BT and Toshiba, working with EY, ran a commercial trial of quantum-secured metro links in London, carrying customer data over a live network. Orange has launched a quantum research program aimed at testing how quantum can improve network operations. And reporting shows that more than two dozen operators worldwide, including Verizon, Telefónica and Telstra, are exploring both security and operational use cases for quantum computing.
The message is clear: the industry has moved past curiosity. Quantum pilots are live. The question is which carriers will build the internal muscle today that lets them lead when larger quantum machines arrive.
Where quantum can fit
Consider some of the most resource-intensive challenges telecom engineers face:
- Network planning and routing. Designing routes across dense metro clusters involves exploring vast numbers of possible topologies. Quantum-guided solvers are able to evaluate more candidates in the same wall-clock time, producing options that improve throughput and reduce latency variance.
- Spectrum assignment. Dense urban deployments face an almost intractable channel assignment challenge. Hybrid quantum-classical methods are already being used to sift through huge search spaces, identify promising configurations.
- Antenna configuration. Tiny shifts in tilt or azimuth add up across thousands of radios. Quantum-driven search across large parameter sets can reveal settings that improve coverage and handover performance.
- Traffic forecasting. Accurate prediction is critical for edge computing nodes, where under- or over-provisioning has a direct cost. Quantum methods are being explored to help select features that could improve forecast accuracy and sharpen autoscaling decisions.
- Fraud and anomaly detection. Call-detail records generate a flood of data. Hybrid quantum-classical anomaly detection reduces false positives and improves recall, giving fraud teams cleaner leads to pursue.
Many other applications should also be kept in mind, including enhanced network security quantum, optimization of patch management, network facility location, network resource allocation, network propagation and network resiliency to name a few. These shouldn’t be treated as distant goals. Use cases can be explored in 90-day proofs of concept already today. Telcos already hold the necessary data and with quantum hardware available through the cloud; trials are both practical and timely.
What a quantum pilot looks like
The most effective pilot projects are small and well defined. An operator picks two use cases, spectrum assignment in a city and fraud detection in a specific business unit, for example. A joint team of engineers, data scientists and a quantum application engineer sets clear key performance indicators tied to KPIs such as throughput, latency or ticket volume. The work runs in the cloud, often through services like AWS Braket or Azure Quantum, which give access to multiple hardware back ends and quantum simulators through a single interface.
The team fixes a time or cost budget per run, compares the best results against baselines and decides whether to expand scope.
This process will be familiar to telecom R&D and network engineering professionals, since it mirrors how new radio features and vendor platforms are tested today. Quantum pilots are simply another form of innovation project, one that addresses some of the industry’s most stubborn optimization problems.
Security in parallel
None of this downplays the scale of the security transition. Post-quantum cryptography will touch every system and take years to complete, and carriers cannot defer it. But while that work moves forward, they should also capture the knowledge and potential gains that quantum pilots can deliver.
What’s next for telecom?
For the foreseeable future, most telecom quantum applications will be hybrid. Quantum machines will focus on the most complex parts of the problem set, while classical computing systems will handle network data ingestion, scoring and orchestration. This division of labor fits industry needs and aligns with the hardware roadmaps that major vendors have published.
The telecom industry has a long track record of experimenting early with new technologies. Those experiments create the institutional knowledge that shapes commercial deployments. Quantum should be treated the same way. Telcos that build experience now, through careful, scoped proofs of concept, will be the ones best positioned to benefit when larger quantum computers arrive.
