Sparkle and Arqit Test Quantum-Safe Encryption on a Multi-100G Optical Ring

On December 3, 2025, Arqit Quantum Inc. and Sparkle, the international division of TIM Group and a Tier 1 global operator with more than 600,000 km of fibre, announced a proof of concept in which Arqit's SKA-Platform was used to inject quantum-safe symmetric keys into Sparkle's metropolitan optical ring in Athens, Greece. According to the announcement, the encryption ran on multi-100G optical links through Sparkle's Quantum-Safe over Internet service and universal CPE appliances, with no reported loss of performance. The companies describe it as a ready now path to quantum-safe transport on existing optical infrastructure.

Provenance: this is a public announcement by the companies named. It describes a proof of concept, not a commercial deployment, a customer contract or a Fabric Networks engagement. Fabric Networks was not involved. We record it here because the platform demonstrated is the one Fabric licenses and operates in Canada.

What it does and does not show

It shows that symmetric key agreement can be delivered into carrier optical equipment at 100G class line rates without a rebuild, which is the question every network operator asks first. It does not show a production rollout, a paying customer or a Canadian deployment. The announcement names no contract and no timeline.

Our take

This is the same platform Fabric Networks operates as a Canadian hosted private instance. The relevance for a Canadian carrier or utility is narrow and useful: the objection that quantum-safe key delivery cannot keep up with optical transport has now been tested publicly by a Tier 1 operator, on a metro ring, at multi-100G. The next question is not whether the platform can do it but what is on your own ring today: which links carry long lived data, what key exchange protects them, and which of them are in scope under Bill C-8. That is the inventory Fabric's Discovery Program produces. Detect first, then protect the links that matter.