Dr. Kris Naudts is the Founding & Managing partner of Firgun Ventures, a global quantum-first VC firm investing in Series A/B scale-ups.
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The early internet rewarded companies controlling the networks, standards and services that connected computers as richly as the firms building the machines. Briefly in 2000, the most valuable company in the world was Cisco, maker of the routers and switches carrying the traffic. Quantum computing companies resemble that era’s chip, server and cloud providers, and telecom operators sit where the backbone providers once sat, holding infrastructure, expertise and customer relationships a quantum company cannot cheaply reproduce. The analogy is imperfect, but it shows telecom operators have the opportunity to capture real value without ever building a quantum computer.
Quantum arrives at operators from both directions. Machines capable of breaking the cryptography that protects their networks would force them to replace those locks, even as the same technology promises better-run networks and new services to sell. The operator is therefore a target protecting an enormous installed estate, a vendor selling the expertise that security produces, and a gatekeeper connecting the wider ecosystem of quantum computers, sensors and secure links.
The Migration Burden That Arrives Before The Revenue
Cryptography runs through a telecom network like a distributed material, embedded in network equipment, SIM cards, subscriber authentication, roaming systems and millions of devices. Replacing it is closer to a multiyear network upgrade than a software patch, because equipment installed today will still be carrying traffic when quantum-resistant security stops being optional.
In the UK, the National Cyber Security Centre has already set clear target dates, asking organizations to complete cryptographic discovery by 2028, high-priority migration by 2031 and the full transition by 2035. Operators must locate vulnerable cryptography, map vendor dependencies and rank systems by the sensitivity and shelf life of their data. All of that spending lands before meaningful revenue flows from quantum-safe connectivity, an uncomfortable sequence for a capital-intensive telecoms industry. The compensation is that clearer cryptographic visibility and more adaptable security repay the program in conventional resilience long before the quantum threat arrives.
Turning Migration Experience Into A Managed Security Business
Conventional resilience is only the internal half of that return, since what operators learn defending their own estates can be sold to governments, banks and critical infrastructure, whose data must stay confidential for decades. BT was among the first to test that market. Through its London quantum-secured metro network built with Toshiba, EY became its first commercial customer in 2022, followed by HSBC as its first banking customer. Toshiba supplied the quantum key distribution (QKD) hardware, which uses quantum mechanics to share cryptographic keys, while BT packaged it as a managed service and owned the customer relationship.
That distinction matters because QKD alone merely distributes keys, without encrypting data, authenticating users or securing devices. The saleable proposition is the managed service wrapped around it, combining fiber, post-quantum cryptography, encryption, authentication and monitoring under one agreement that quantum specialists may struggle to assemble at national scale.
Telecoms operators are also becoming early adopters, testing quantum methods on their own operational problems, where real infrastructure and proprietary data give them an edge outside vendors would struggle to replicate. Telstra, an investor in Silicon Quantum Computing (SQC), a Firgun Ventures portfolio company, tested whether SQC’s Watermelon could forecast network performance, and Telstra reported comparable accuracy after days of training rather than the weeks its classical deep learning model needed. AT&T went further in July 2026, signing an agreement to expand its use of D-Wave technology after an early application cut a network optimization workload from about an hour to under 15 seconds. These examples suggest that operators could use their proprietary data and operational problems to develop quantum expertise. A logical next step is to package successful methods into services for other customers.
From Fiber Owner To Orchestrator Of Hybrid Quantum Networks
The longer-horizon role sees operators connecting quantum processors, memories and sensors across locations. What is emerging is quantum links running inside ordinary networks, with conventional infrastructure still handling control, authentication and everything the customer touches, a theme Firgun Ventures explored in our Insights Series piece, “The Quantum Internet: A Relay With No Single Leader.”
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has explored this architecture since 2024 through its Quantum-Augmented Network (QuANET) program, where a 2025 mixed-network demonstration cut message delivery time from five minutes to under a millisecond. Commercial hardware is following, as Qunnect, a quantum networks startup, and Monarch Quantum, an integrated photonics company, partnered in August 2026 to build smaller, manufacturable versions of Qunnect’s Carina system, which distributes entanglement, a quantum link between particles regardless of distance, across ordinary telecom fiber. DARPA awarded Qunnect a contract the same month to help those fragile signals survive in field fiber.
Owning fiber does not automatically mean owning the most valuable part of the market. Early quantum network access is already being sold, but the control software that allocates hardware, routes traffic and delivers the service tends to come from quantum specialists rather than the fiber owner. Orchestration is where the margin is likely to sit, since it lets customers buy a reliable service without understanding the technology, and whether operators or specialists will hold that layer is still open.
What Operators Must Own To Capture The Value
The three roles arrive on different timelines, which is the central consideration for operators allocating capital. Security obligations are immediate, managed services nearer-term and large-scale quantum networking longer-horizon. Therefore, capital must be committed before standards and revenue models settle, and the investment compounds if operators treat it as one program with three phases rather than three separate businesses.
The familiar risk from the internet era is that operators fund capital-intensive connectivity while others capture the higher-margin services above it. Avoiding that means deciding early which layers to own, which to build with partners and which standards to help write. Telecom operators will be pulled into quantum whether or not they choose to lead it, and the open question is whether they treat it as another mandatory upgrade or a way to strengthen their position in the digital economy.
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