C-DOT puts 14 made-in-India quantum products on a Foundation Day table

The Centre for Development of Telematics used its 43rd Foundation Day in New Delhi to put 14 indigenous quantum products in front of the communications ministry. Union Minister Jyotiraditya M. Scindia and Minister of State Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani attended with Telecom Secretary Amit Agrawal and C-DOT chief executive Rajkumar Upadhyay. The official release is dated 31 August.

The stack covers Quantum Key Distribution hardware, Post-Quantum Cryptography software and the components that sit between them. Upadhyay said the units are production-grade, not laboratory boards, and that early commercial sales have already passed $1 million. The customers named in briefings are sovereign networks, banks and telecom operators that have to move off classical public-key systems before a large quantum computer arrives.

What is in the 14

Q-AKSHAY CD is a 1U fibre QKD box running Coherent One Way and Differential Phase Shift protocols. Q-AKSHAY MD uses the Measurement Device Independent protocol, which is designed to close a class of attacks on the detectors themselves. C-SPD is a single-photon detector. C-RD is a wideband radio-frequency driver for the intensity and phase modulators that QKD links need.

On the cryptography side, Q-SETU is a Layer 3 encryptor rated at 80 Mbps and loaded with NIST post-quantum algorithms. Q-MAHASETU is a commercial Layer 2/3 box rated at 40 Gbps. The rest of the list, in the ministry note, is a set of specialised modules for wireless, optical, enterprise and defence networks. The design aim is a quantum-safe path that can sit on fibre already in the ground rather than a parallel national network built from scratch.

Why the ministry put it on a stage

Pemmasani told the room that India now has a chance to write 6G and quantum-security standards instead of only reading them. He pointed to the C-DOT and TCS-led 4G stack already running at 100,000 BSNL sites for about 22 million subscribers, a figure the government uses to claim India is the fifth country with a homegrown 4G core. The quantum boxes are being sold as the next layer on that argument.

The practical test is narrower than a standard-setting speech. QKD over fibre is distance-limited and expensive. PQC algorithms can be dropped into existing routers. A ministry that wants both on the same trolley has to say which traffic gets photons and which traffic gets new maths. The 80 Mbps Q-SETU and the 40 Gbps Q-MAHASETU already imply an answer: most packets will be wrapped in PQC; QKD will be reserved for the keys and for links that a service can price.

C-DOT is a DoT lab, not a listed vendor. Shipping 14 named products, posting a revenue figure and putting two ministers in the photograph is how the lab is trying to look like a supplier. Banks and defence networks will decide whether that photograph is a catalogue.