AT&T and Wave expand their quantum partnership - Telecompetitor

by PivotWIRELESSAIBROADBAND NATIONCYBERSECURITYFIBERM&ARESEARCHPOLICYRURAL BROADBANDVIDEOQuantum computing firm D-Wave Quantum said yesterday that it has expanded its relationship with AT&T. Part of the expansion will focus on the use of D-Wave’s technology to tackle optimization challenges in AT&T’s networks.D-Wave offers both annealing and gate-model approaches to quantum computing. Initially, D-Wave’s quantum fluctuation-based annealing approach will be layered atop AT&T’s agentic AI technology. D-Wave expects the combination to reduce customer downtime beyond the 12 million hours the AI approach saved last year.Previously, AT&T used D-Wave technology to reduce processing time for a network optimization workload from an hour to less than 15 seconds. Plans call for that basic technology to be used for outage detection and response, technician routing, network build planning, and traffic management.AT&T is evaluating D-Wave’s coming gate-model system for quantum security and quantum communications. “D-Wave’s annealing quantum computing technology gives us a new way to approach optimization and high-intensity compute challenges across AT&T’s network operations,” Lucus Haugen, director, data science for AT&T’s Chief Data Office said in a press release. “The speed we’re seeing with D-Wave challenges what’s currently possible. It has the potential to help us optimize faster, increase efficiency and scale more real-time operations, making quantum a practical tool for advancing how we run and modernize our network.” Famously complex and counter intuitive, quantum science has gained a solid foothold in telecommunications. ABQ-Net — a quantum testbed launched earlier this year by the New Mexico Economic Development Department — recently announced four new participants. The new companies are Infleqtion (which will focus on ultra precise and secure network synchronization) and Alira (which is exploring secure key generation). Two companies — Tensora and Bandelier — are developing quantum sensing technology.A real world example of the need for fast and stable connectivity comes from Cisco’s idea — which it discussed this spring — of interconnecting quantum computers.Telecompetitor is a publication of Pivot.Subscribe to our newsletterDesigned by and besties withSubscribe and stay up to date with Telecompetitor’s newsletters today.