How Deutsche Telekom Made Quantum Teleportation Possible

While teleportation sounds like something straight out of Doctor Who or Star Trek, teleportation of quantum information is now a practical reality.

Deutsche Telekom’s T-Labs and quantum networking company Qunnect have successfully demonstrated quantum teleportation across a commercial network in Berlin. The trial marks a milestone in bringing quantum technologies into operational telecommunications infrastructure.

The team used commercial hardware to overcome interference and instability in existing fibre networks, showing how a telecom operator can deploy quantum teleportation alongside regular data traffic. 

In January 2026, the experiment achieved teleportation over 30km of live fibre, using Qunnect’s entanglement distribution platform and Deutsche Telekom’s Berlin quantum infrastructure. 

This is the first practical test of the core components required for a future teleportation service.

Preparing the fibre network for quantum

Quantum teleportation allows information to travel between distant points by recreating the exact quantum state of a particle at its destination. 

It relies on pre-shared quantum entanglement rather than moving a particle physically.

Abdu Mudesir, Telekom Board Member for Product and Technology says: “Our fibre optic network is quantum ready.

"In Berlin we have now proven that quantum information can be transmitted over 30km of commercial Telekom fibre optics outside of a laboratory. 

“This is done in parallel with regular data traffic and with a very high average accuracy of 90%. 

"With quantum teleportation, we are laying the technical foundation for networking quantum computers over longer distances in the future and pooling computing power in more than one location.

"This will create the next generation of secure communication and a building block for Europe's technological sovereignty."

Moving from lab to network

Mael Flament, CTO at Qunnect, explains that teleportation is a "novel tool for moving information around networks leveraging quantum physics".

He continues: “We are showing the building blocks of teleportation can operate inside a real network, in real racks, under operator control, advancing it from a laboratory experiment to something a telecommunications provider can deploy.”

The Berlin trial teleported qubits from a weak coherent source over a 30km fibre loop connecting T-Labs’ Quantum Lab to a testbed node. 

Qunnect’s Carina platform produced entangled photon pairs and includes a polarisation compensation system that offsets environmental noise in both aerial and buried fibre, enabling reliable, high-fidelity transport of quantum bits.

The team achieved average teleportation fidelity of 90%, with peaks of 95%. They used a wavelength of 795nm, compatible with neutral-atom quantum computers, atomic clocks and quantum sensors, paving the way for these systems to connect with telecom networks.

Expanding quantum networks across cities

The Berlin trial builds on previous field experiments by Deutsche Telekom and Qunnect, which demonstrated quantum networking over metropolitan fibre links. Next, the partners plan to expand to multi-node configurations and longer distances, testing new use cases within metro-scale networks.

Quantum teleportation supports applications such as quantum cryptography, distributed quantum computing, secure cloud-based quantum services and networks of sensitive quantum sensors. These capabilities lay the groundwork for metropolitan quantum data centres and advanced quantum networks.

By deploying commercial quantum hardware on live networks, Deutsche Telekom and Qunnect show operators can integrate quantum technology without a lab environment. The Berlin demonstration has positioned the city as a testing ground for quantum communications and illustrates how telecom providers can move experimental quantum technology into mainstream use.

The team is now focused on scaling distance and network complexity, a critical step in turning quantum teleportation from experimental proof into deployable telecom services.