South Korean telecommunications operator SK Telecom (KRX: 017670) and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI) have jointly developed a digital twin technology to simulate and verify Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) network performance prior to physical hardware deployment. Unveiled during the European Conference on Optical Communication (ECOC 2026) at the SK Broadband exhibition booth in Malaga, Spain, the platform connects an independently developed Key Management System (KMS) with a virtual QKD network simulator using European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) standardized interfaces.
The digital twin framework allows network engineers to model physical optical transport parameters—including fiber cable length, attenuation, insertion loss, detection efficiency, and post-processing key distillation routines—in a virtual environment. By using open ETSI standards to link SK Telecom’s containerized, Kubernetes-native Key Management System with KISTI’s QKD simulator, the architecture eliminates vendor lock-in and allows third-party QKD hardware to interface across multi-vendor quantum networks.
| [ SK Telecom & KISTI Digital Twin System Architecture ] | ||
|---|---|---|
| Subsystem Component | Technical Implementation & Software Stack | Operational & Interoperability Function |
| SK Telecom KMS | • Containerized Microservices Infrastructure • Kubernetes-Native Orchestration Engine | • Real-Time Quantum Key Management & Routing • Dynamic Scale-Out across Distributed Nodes |
| KISTI QKD Simulator | • QKDSim-HT Simulation Framework • ETSI GS QKD 014 / GS QKD 015 Compliance | • Virtual Fiber Channel Loss & Attenuation Modeling • Detector Efficiency & Post-Processing Simulation |
Developed under the Ministry of Science and ICT’s national research initiatives, the joint demonstration addresses cost and configuration bottlenecks associated with physical QKD testbeds, enabling operators to optimize key generation rates, topology layouts, and parameter settings in software before deploying physical optical hardware.
Review the official press release via SK Telecom Newsroom here, via Seoul Economic Daily here, and inspect research details on DongA Science here.
September 23, 2026
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