China is reportedly preparing to launch the world's longest quantum communications network technology that will stretch from the city of Beijing up to Shanghai, covering a distance of about 2,000km. The quantum communications system is expected to launch over the next coming months.
Once the quantum network is ready, it will provide data transmission at the speed of light, including an unbreakable and secure link between government offices, military, businesses and financial institutions in China, Xinhua News Agency reported.
The construction of the network could cost about $16 million per 10 thousand users, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Pan Jianwei, current head of the project and Professor of Quantum Physics at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, said the quantum communications network could be expanded to the rest of the world, possibly in the next ten to twenty years.
Previously, Jianwei and his team had already worked with Chinese tech giants Alibaba Group and ZTE Corporation, among others, in an effort to bring quantum communications technology into commercial use.
In the meantime, China will also be the first country in the world to launch a quantum communications network satellite into orbit, sometime in 2016. Once this satellite reaches into space, it is expected to transfer protected data by using the Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) method, according to Market Watch. An experiment on the QKD method was carried out by Jianwei and his team back in 2013.
In addition, Chinese scientists have also been focusing on the development of quantum computers that can perform much faster than today's supercomputers. Unlike digital computers, quantum computing uses quantum bits instead of binary digits.