This week in Vienna, researchers demonstrated a working quantum key distribution (QKD) network, a feat that produced some good news and some bad news. The good news is that Siemens is probably going to be selling this stuff in a year or so; IT professionals, get ready to open your check books. On the other hand, by doing such a demo, the researchers show that QKD has passed from the realm of science into engineering, and they illustrate the weakness of fundamental scientific research in Europe.

Quantum key distribution utilizes fundamental physics to encode information in such a way that eavesdroppers are automatically detected. (More details on that process can be found in previous articles here at Ars Technica.) The Vienna demonstration by the SECO-QC team doesn't add anything new in the way of science, but it does represent something significant in terms of shifting from basic research to application.

The group demonstrated a robust, ready-for-commercialization set of quantum cryptography units. These were already packaged into typical 19-inch racks that use standard fiber optic and electronic interfaces. In other words, all your encryption technology is right there, ready to go.

The demonstration unit is supposed to work with a variety of different encryption protocols. Quantum encryption relies on entanglement (again, see the articles linked above), and there is more than one way to entangle two photons. Until now, every demonstration has been specific to a particular choice of entanglement. The researchers behind this project, however, claim that their detection systems are agnostic and can cope with any choice of entanglement variables.

I would guess that banks—gotta keep that lack of capital a secret—and various government organizations will be interested in this technology and Siemens, along with some smaller partners, will be well-placed to extract an extra dollop of dollars in these hard economic times.

What bothers me a bit is that this is not science anymore. It's a great demonstration, and it is just the sort of thing that will open up an entirely new market. But the science part ended a while ago. This highlights the strengths and weaknesses of European research; close collaboration with industry, partially funded by either national government or EU grants, can really speed progress toward real applications. I like this approach, and I think the Europeans do this reasonably well.

The weakness is that the projects are structured in such a way that the academic results are not very interesting by the end of the project. As a result, much of the work ends up in lower-ranked journals. The two Nature papers and seven Physical Review Letters produced by the quantum encryption team sound pretty good until you count the number of academic institutions involved: 26.

The EU is directing science to great commercial success, but it may pay the price for this focus by not allowing scientists to pursue really high-impact fundamental research.