At Rise of AI Summit 2020 in Berlin, Claudia Pohlink, Head of AI/ML at Telekom Innovation Laboratories, describes her team's two-year journey exploring quantum computing and quantum machine learning. She explains that qubits use superposition to hold multiple states at once and entanglement to let distant qubits interact instantly, which lets a quantum computer process combinations that grow exponentially with each added qubit. She focuses on optimization problems, illustrating the traveling-salesman-style routing problem with Deutsche Telekom's own network points, and describes the company's first real use case, frequency assignment planning for 2G mobile network towers, run on a quantum annealer and benchmarked against classical algorithms. She distinguishes gate computers such as IBM's and Google's from D-Wave's quantum simulator and Fujitsu's "quantum-inspired" digital annealing unit. In the Q&A, she says Deutsche Telekom has a ten-person team working on quantum topics, expects access to a real quantum computer next year, and describes convincing management to explore new technology before a business model exists as the hardest part of the work.
Key takeaways
- Pohlink says a qubit's superposition lets it hold multiple states at once, so processing power grows exponentially with each added qubit.
- Deutsche Telekom's first concrete use case is frequency assignment planning for 2G towers, run on a quantum annealer and benchmarked against classical methods.
- She distinguishes IBM and Google's gate computers from D-Wave's quantum simulator and Fujitsu's "quantum-inspired" digital annealing bridge technology.
- She says quantum computing will not replace classical computers but suits complex combinatorial optimization problems like routing.
- She reports Deutsche Telekom's quantum team has ten people today, expects real quantum computing access next year, and targets a 2030 "quantum internet" vision.
Detailed notes
How a new technology enters a large corporation
Pohlink frames the talk as the story of how Deutsche Telekom's R&D department, which works on a three-to-five-year horizon, first noticed quantum computers on its trend radar two years earlier and decided to investigate. She quotes Richard Feynman's line that "nobody understands quantum mechanics," and says exploring a new field requires persistence, curiosity and imagination rather than immediate KPIs. Deutsche Telekom's own focus within the broader field of quantum science is quantum computing and quantum-secure communications.
Superposition, entanglement and why quantum computing matters
She explains that a classical bit is 0 or 1, while a qubit can hold both states at once through superposition; four classical bits give one of 16 possible combinations, while four qubits can represent all 16 simultaneously, with growth accelerating exponentially as more qubits are added. Entanglement lets qubits that are far apart influence each other instantly. She stresses that quantum computing will not replace classical computers but is restricted to certain problem types, mainly complex combinatorial optimization.
Routing optimization and Deutsche Telekom's use cases
Using routing optimization, related to the traveling salesman problem, she shows that even 20 network points create far more combinations than classical computers can handle efficiently, and that quantum computers could add factors like speed limits, traffic lights and air pollution that are not feasible today. She lists further candidate use cases across industries: customer classification, fake news detection, quantum key distribution, service scheduling and network anomaly detection. She notes three hardware types: IBM and Google's gate computers, D-Wave's quantum simulator, and Fujitsu's "quantum-inspired" digital annealing unit, a bridge technology relevant for edge deployment.
Frequency assignment planning: a real use case
Deutsche Telekom's first concrete use case is frequency assignment planning (FAP) for mobile network towers, currently in 2G, with the optimization goals of maximizing allocated frequencies to meet traffic demand and minimizing interference. The team formulated this as a Hamiltonian, ran it on a quantum annealer, and benchmarked the result against classical algorithms, a comparison she says is required for every case at Deutsche Telekom. She also describes a breast cancer classification example based on work by Google's Hartmut Neven, run on a quantum annealer, calling quantum machine learning still largely a matter of translating classical machine learning algorithms into quantum circuits.
Q&A highlights
Pohlink says Deutsche Telekom's quantum team currently has ten people who understand the topic, that colleagues are further advanced on quantum key distribution, and that the company is building a 2030 vision toward a "quantum internet." She expects to get access to computing time on an actual quantum computer next year, and mentions IBM's announcement of roughly 1,000 qubits by 2023 and Finnish company IQM's plan to build Europe's first quantum computer. Asked about management buy-in, she says the hardest part is convincing leadership to fund exploration before a business model exists, describing it as a mindset change requiring trust in the experts.
Quotes
I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics, so do I.
Claudia Pohlink
Quantum computing will not substitute classical computers, but it is restricted to certain types of use cases.
Claudia Pohlink
You have to start small and think big.
Claudia Pohlink
Questions answered in this talk
What is Deutsche Telekom's first real-world quantum computing use case?
According to Claudia Pohlink at Rise of AI Summit 2020, it is frequency assignment planning for 2G mobile network towers, run on a quantum annealer with the goals of maximizing allocated frequencies and minimizing interference, benchmarked against classical algorithms.
What is the difference between a quantum gate computer and a quantum annealer?
Pohlink explains that gate computers, built by companies like IBM and Google, are the largest and most general systems, while D-Wave offers a quantum simulator and Fujitsu's digital annealing unit is a "quantum-inspired" bridge technology suited to smaller-scale or edge deployment.
Will quantum computing replace classical computers?
No. Pohlink says at Rise of AI Summit 2020 that quantum computing will not substitute classical computing but is restricted to specific problem classes, mainly complex combinatorial optimization such as routing and frequency planning.