It has long been apparent that existing optical telecommunications fiber may be a suitable transmission channel for quantum information, instead of or in addition to classical light. The first experimental demonstrations of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) over telecom fiber took place in the 1990s, with significant architectural ideas for QKD networks in telecom systems as early as 1994. Teleportation was demonstrated a bit later, and opened the possibility of a 'quantum internet' to transport arbitrary quantum states from one location to another. Quantum repeaters added a further important conceptual tool.
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