On January 17, 2023, the BeQCI (Belgian Quantum Communication Infrastructure) consortium kicked off a 30-month project to deploy the first open quantum communication infrastructure in Belgium. According to the announcement from imec, the project has an allocated budget of €6 million ($6.5 million) and is co-funded by the EU through the Digital Europe Programme and the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office (Belspo) through the Federal Restart and Transition Plan.
BeQCI forms the Belgian branch of the European Quantum Communication Infrastructure (EuroQCI) initiative. The consortium brings together university research groups from UGent, KU Leuven, UCLouvain, ULB, and UHasselt, along with research centers imec and Multitel, government agencies Belspo and Belnet, and defense institution the Royal Military Academy. Thales participates as a private-sector partner.
Over 30 months, the consortium plans to deploy quantum key distribution (QKD) links along dedicated optical fibers between nodes in Brussels, Leuven, Ghent, Hasselt, and Redu, with potential cross-border connections to Luxembourg and the Netherlands. A training and dissemination component will educate users from government, industry, and academia on QKD technologies.