Quantum computing is often viewed as being years away–a technology of the future. But one critical piece of the quantum future is already here: quantum networking.

Quantum networking is more than an upgrade to the internet. The technology uses the laws of physics to unlock capabilities that classical networking simply can’t match. Among them: improbably secure communications and distributed quantum applications.

At Qunnect, we’ve proudly taken this from theory to deployment and commercialization. We’ve built the world’s first commercial, turnkey quantum entanglement networking solution—and we’ve proven it by building metro-scale networks, using standard telecom fiber, alongside classical data traffic. We’ve also managed to do this at performance levels that near traditional carriers.

Yesterday, we unveiled the system behind that success. Carina is the first commercially available, rack-mounted quantum networking system capable of generating and distributing entanglement at scale. It’s engineered for manufacturability and modular deployment, and scientifically designed for compatibility with other quantum platforms. Carina requires no cryogenics or custom infrastructure, and delivers entanglement at scale, in every sense of the term.

Carina was designed to answer a foundational question: how do we make quantum networking practical, not just for researchers, but for industry? That means reliable performance outside the lab, over existing infrastructure, in a system that’s turnkey, plug-and-play, and easy to deploy.

To accomplish this, we needed to not only create new quantum tech, but also the stabilizing and integration tech to make sure it worked on current telecom infrastructure and in conjunction with classical technologies. That required packaging entangled photon sources, active polarization stabilization, synchronized timing pulses, entanglement validation, and network orchestration into a single, modular, and customizable product.

Carina has now been deployed in major metropolitan cities and demonstrated superior fidelity, real-time error correction, and consistent performance. Carina creates testbeds that prove entanglement-based networking is not just viable in controlled settings—it is stable, secure, and usable in environments that reflect actual network demands, and paves a pathway to the quantum networks of tomorrow.

The Carina system is composed of four subsystems working together:

• Qu‑SRC: a polarization-entangled photon source, which produces narrow-bandwidth photon pairs with high brightness suitable for real-world transmission over fiber
• Qu‑APC: an active polarization compensator that detects and corrects fiber-induced drift in real time, preserving entanglement quality across dynamically shifting network paths
• Qu‑LSR: a suite of ultra-stable lasers locked to atomic transitions, which provide frequency references and synchronization pulses that are critical for entanglement generation and system stability
• Qu‑VAL: a continuous monitoring and validation module that reports on link health and triggers automated recalibration as needed

Use cases for Carina are already emerging across critical sectors. In government and defense settings, Carina enables secure point-to-point communications, with entanglement’s fragility serving as an early-warning system for interception and eavesdropping attempts. In financial services, entanglement-based links support quantum position verification—authenticating the physical location of counterparties—and enable the generation of random encryption keys that cannot be predicted or spoofed. In energy and infrastructure, Carina points the way to protecting SCADA systems and grid communications. Looking ahead, Carina’s entanglement distribution capabilities will enable future and far-reaching applications, serving as versatile quantum interconnects for scalable quantum computing, distributed sensing networks, and beyond.

There’s still work ahead, to be sure–work we are excited to share with you in the coming weeks. Quantum networking is no longer a theoretical milestone to be reached in the future. Thanks to Carina, it’s offering a tangible path forward—after all, quantum infrastructure is the backbone of the quantum internet.