QUANTUM weirdness has finally made it out of the lab and into a commercial product. A Swiss start-up has become the first company in the world to sell a quantum cryptography system designed to guarantee the secrecy of messages sent along standard optical fibres.
The company, id Quantique, is exploiting technology developed at the University of Geneva, one of the world leaders in research into quantum cryptography. Grégoire Ribordy, a physicist at the university who runs the company, hopes the products will kick-start an industry that could be worth billions.
Quantum cryptography was conceived in 1984 by Charles Bennett…
