CARRIER

Designated under Bill C-8. Positioned to sell the answer.

Carriers and service providers face quantum-safe encryption twice: on their own backbone as a designated operator, and as a service their enterprise customers will soon demand. Fabric works on both.

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Overview

Why now

Bill C-8 amended the Telecommunications Act on Royal Assent in June 2026, and telecommunications is one of the four sectors named in the Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act. Designated operators will owe a cyber security program, supply chain risk mitigation and incident reporting to the Cyber Centre, with the regulations being written now. ITSM.40.001 sets the federal migration timeline that every government contract will inherit, and enterprise customers in energy, finance and government are about to ask their carrier what protects the links they lease. Optical transport at multi-100G has now carried quantum-safe symmetric keys in a public Tier 1 proof of concept; the objection that it cannot be done at line rate has been tested.

What is different about telecommunications

A carrier is an operator and a channel at once. The backbone, the backhaul and the peering points are in scope for regulation, and the same capability, packaged as a managed service, is a revenue line. Networks run at scale across thousands of endpoints and several vendors' equipment, and nothing can be changed that risks an outage. Differentiation in managed security is hard, and provably quantum-safe is one of the few claims that is still uncommon.

What you get

For the carrier's own estate: the Fall 2026 Discovery Program, scoped to backbone, backhaul and management networks, with a cryptographic bill of materials, findings ranked by operational consequence, a roadmap mapped to ITSM.40.001 and the evidence a Bill C-8 program will require.

For the carrier's product line: architecture and integration of the SKA Central Controller within the carrier environment, so quantum-safe VPN, SD WAN enhancement and managed encryption can be offered to enterprise customers on whatever equipment they already run; FortiGate, Juniper, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and Ciena are examples, not an exclusive list. The carrier keeps the customer relationship and operational control; Fabric provides the architecture, the integration and the operating framework.

A written, fixed scope quote before any work starts. Flexible pricing to fit your budget.

How we work

Detect first. Every finding is labelled customer supplied, discovered or our judgment. Fabric Networks designs, supplies, installs and operates in Canada, from Calgary, on a platform validated to FIPS 140-3, with a Fortinet Fabric-Ready key delivery integration and open interfaces to Juniper SRX, Cisco SKIP, strongSwan, Ciena optical encryption and other platforms; the approach is vendor agnostic. Public demonstrations of the platform by other carriers and operators are recorded in the Library, marked as demonstrations, not as our deliverables.

Who this is for

Regional and national carriers, ISPs, managed service providers, tower and fibre infrastructure companies, and the network and product leads who own the backbone and the managed security portfolio.

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Guidance

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Key Challenges

  • Designated operator obligations arriving while the cryptographic inventory does not exist
  • Delivering quantum-safe services without disrupting existing operations
  • Scaling symmetric key management across thousands of endpoints and several vendors
  • Enterprise customers asking for PQC compliance ahead of the deadlines
  • Standing out in managed security

How Fabric Helps

  • Backbone and backhaul: inventory and hardening for Bill C-8 readiness
  • SKA Central Controller deployment: quantum-safe key management as a network service
  • SD WAN and SASE enhancement: quantum-safe encryption added to existing managed services
  • Enterprise managed VPN hardening: quantum-safe overlay for corporate VPN customers
  • 5G and open RAN: backhaul security
  • Fibre backhaul and last mile builds: from costed route to as built, quantum-safe on day one

Questions from this sector

How does this become something we can sell?

The SKA Central Controller is architected and integrated inside your environment so quantum-safe VPN, SD WAN enhancement and managed encryption can be offered to your enterprise customers on whatever firewall and routing equipment they already run; FortiGate, Juniper, Cisco, Palo Alto Networks and Ciena are examples, and the key delivery is device agnostic through open interfaces. You keep the customer relationship and operational control; Fabric provides the architecture, the integration and the operating framework.

What happens to our existing FortiGate estate?

It stays. Quantum-safe keys are delivered into existing FortiGate tunnels through a Fortinet Fabric-Ready validated integration, with policy and hardware unchanged.

Can it keep up with our backbone?

A Tier 1 carrier has publicly tested quantum-safe symmetric key delivery on a metro optical ring at multi-100G, in a proof of concept recorded in the Library with its source. That is their demonstration, not ours, and it tested the question most carriers ask first.

We are a designated operator and a seller of the service. Is that a conflict?

No, it is the position. Your own backbone and backhaul go through the Discovery Program like any designated operator's; the product line is a separate scope. The two share a platform and an inventory, which is why doing the first makes the second cheaper.

Start with a scoping call

Twenty minutes, no slides. We ask about your sites, what is driving the interest now and what a useful outcome looks like, and we tell you plainly whether a Discovery Program fits or whether a smaller first step is right.

Questions first? Read the answers buyers ask for most.