South Korea plans large scale quantum cryptography adoption, thanks in part to tech partnership with USA
- Reference: 1621931589
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/05/25/south_korea_quantum_encryption/
- Source link:
The two announcements are unrelated.
The quantum tests will build on demos conducted in 2020, but this time South Korea’s government hopes to involve multiple industries and to educate them on the benefits of the tech and how to adopt it.
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The aim of the tests is creating an ecosystem of players that eventually translates into wide adoption of quantum crypto for everyday communications among businesses, and a thriving industry.
Another factor in play is that the US President Biden and South Korean President Moon met at a summit last weekend and among the joint initiatives agreed on was developing “a future-oriented partnership by leading innovation” on quantum tech, plus AI, 5G and 6G, open-RAN, and clean energy tech.”
[3]South Korea creates ‘metaverse alliance’ to build an open national VR platform
[4]South Korea creates $451bn semiconductor stimulus package
[5]South Korea orders urgent review of energy infrastructure cybersecurity
South Korea’s announcement of its new quantum initiative mentions its desire to collaborate with its ally.
The 2G announcement doesn’t. It instead notes that the last remaining 2G carrier LG Uplus has applied to shut down its networks, that an expert panel doesn’t object, and that if Uplus does the right thing by customers by migrating them to comparably priced plans and helping with device migration, all will be well. ®
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[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/18/south_korea_metaverse_alliance/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/14/south_korea_semiconductor_stimulus/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/12/south_korea_security_review/
[6] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Upgrade or die
...and helping with device migration...
The problem will be a large volume of "old" 2G modems that many systems have set up. Here in Europe, the problem may be significantly larger than in South Korea, but I guess that quite a bit of remote equipment will go silent when the 2G net is switched off.
Migrating old equipment may not be an option and would then need to be replaced. But, replacement may prove very difficult, considering that some of this stuff may be 15+ years old and have no "modern" equivalent and most likely no support contracts.
With the accelerated changes in standards during the last 25 or so years, it has become clear that (planned) obsolescence is a much bigger problem. Sure, products are designed to fail fast, but when the standards chance rapidly, then you are forced to change more often than you'd like. As an example, we went through several digital television standards in very short time and created lots of expensive paperweight in that process. Yes, it is expensive to maintain "old" tech like 2G, but sometimes when it just works, why do you need to change it? Well you might want to change it, but please, also make me a dumb-phone again that will work on a 4G network.
Start off small.....
I wouldn't be an early adopter for something that I cannot easily verify.