Innovation Martlesham company ANGOKA Ltd was recently chosen to work with BT, along with partners Nu Quantum, Arqit and Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG) among others to develop and test end-to-end quantum-secured communication for 5G.

The AIRQKD Trial, which was funded by £7.7 million from Innovate UK, is part of the UK’s National Quantum Technologies programme. The aim of the project is to incorporate BT’s capabilities and expertise with the innovation and agility of the selected startups to provide new ways of securing mobile and IoT devices using quantum technologies.

The trial will attempt to produce Quantum Key Distribution over various networks, in tandem with Angoka’s quantum-enhanced security chips within devices. The result should be a virtually un-hackable connection between 5G towers and devices. Trials are planned to take place at BT’s labs at Adastral Park in Suffolk.

The project will run for a total of three years, and began this past summer. With use cases spanning industries, including IoT and autonomous and connected vehicles, the trial represents an exciting launch into quantum-secure communications and networks for a variety of applications.

Yuri Andersson, co-founder and CEO of Angoka said, “As an increasing number of devices are becoming connected, ensuring the security of their communication becomes fundamental to our societies and our way of life. Angoka has developed a unique hardware security solution which integrates seamlessly with QKD to provide not only superior performance, but crucially also the ‘last-mile’ delivery of these ultra-secure encryption keys to the end users. We are delighted to be working with BT and our other partners to help bring quantum security to the Internet of Things.”

Andrew Lord, Senior Manager, Optical Networks Research, BT noted, “Angoka are at the forefront of a thrilling new technology – Physically Unclonable Functions – which will bring strong security and authentication to consumers. As Project Manager of the Innovate-UK funded project AIRQKD, I am privileged to see how Angoka’s technology is being interfaced into broader security solutions, such as for 5G and autonomous vehicles.”

ANGOKA is excited to start working on such a forward-looking project and to be working with a 5G industry leader. As ever, we are committed to creating innovative solutions to secure machine-to-machine communications, and are pleased to be providing our expertise and unique designs to the trial.

About Angoka: ANGOKA Ltd is an IoT security start-up, headquartered in Belfast and with an office in London. Angoka has patented technology for securing connected devices, providing embedded security solutions to protect a device’s identity and safeguard the integrity off machine-to-machine (M2M) communication and data provenance. Our solutions can be across Smart Cities, Smart Mobility and Smart Transport.