Since 2002, when quantum cryp­tography was first commercially launched as the new gold standard in secure communication, only a handful of particularly paranoid early adopters have subscribed to it. But now a breakthrough by Toshiba is promising to make the technology more competitive with traditional cryptography and push it into the mainstream.

Toshiba has discovered a way to make quantum-cryptographic data more stable and to transmit it at five times the current rate. "We have made the technology much more stable and easier to use," says Andrew Shields, who is head of Toshiba's Quantum Information Group in Cambridge, England. Shields says Toshiba is talking with financial institutions in the City of London about installing the system later this year.