72,000 kilometres, quantum-protected: Cyprus and Greece complete a first secure satellite link

Cyprus and Greece have established their first quantum-secure satellite data connection, in a project run by the Italian telecom infrastructure company Sparkle together with the Greek-Cypriot satellite operator Hellas Sat. The result was announced on 2 September 2026.

The link applies Sparkle's Quantum Safe Interconnect (QSI) technology to a satellite path running between Sparkle's data centre in Metamorfosi, Athens, and Hellas Sat infrastructure in Cyprus — a round trip of roughly 72,000 kilometres through the satellite system. The deployment is licensed by both the Greek and Cypriot governments and follows earlier successful testing carried out in Greece over the course of 2026.

The threat being addressed is the one usually described as "store now, decrypt later": encrypted traffic intercepted and archived today, in the expectation that future machines will be powerful enough to break it. Quantum-safe protection is intended to keep that captured data unreadable even then.

Antonella Sanguineti, Sparkle's head of Networking, Cloud, Security & Identity Solutions, and Constantinos Kassianides, Hellas Sat's director of Ground Operations, presented the work as the first time quantum protection has been applied to a satellite connection between the two countries. Both sides noted the approach carries over to terrestrial networks and to remote locations where resilient, secure connectivity is hard to guarantee.

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