Explained in 1 minute: ultra-secure quantum internet
In this series, we answer the question that everyone has but is afraid to ask.
Published on May 13, 2025
Team IO+ selects and features the most important news stories on innovation and technology, carefully curated by our editors.
The current internet: you could see it as a digital highway that connects computers all over the world. The quantum internet is basically just the internet for quantum computers. It connects quantum computers to each other through a special channel. This lets computers exchange info through quantum bits, also called qubits.
And that's exactly where the big difference with the regular internet lies. On the regular internet, information is exchanged using bits that are either 0 or 1, while the value of a qubit is a complex combination of 0 and 1, which only becomes either a 0 or a 1 when read. Because quantum computers calculate using qubits, they can perform calculations that are far too complex or time-consuming for classical computers.
The major advantage of the quantum internet is that quantum computers can communicate directly with each other without information first having to be converted into classical bits. This means that no information is lost. Moreover, the quantum internet is much more secure: any attempt to measure or eavesdrop on a qubit immediately disrupts its state due to the fragility of quantum states. This means that eavesdropping attempts are immediately detected, making the network intrinsically secure.
