In the test, carried out on Monday at Tehran’s Milad Tower, researchers used photons to carry a message encrypted through quantum keys between parties stationed at the tower and the nearby AEOI premises.
AEOI Chief Ali Akbar Salehi and Iranian Vice-President for Science and Technology Affairs Sorena Sattari attended the ceremony to promote the homegrown QKD.
Researchers had previously tested the technology on shorter distances of two meters and 300 meters, Press TV reported.
The tests began in 2018 when Iran announced it will become one of the few countries in the world to develop QKD.
Salehi said his organization is planning to launch the fourth phase of QKD test on a 7-kilometer distance between the Milad Tower and Azadi Tower in Tehran in the near future.
He also hoped the AEOI could use the QKD for secure communication between the organization’s headquarters in Tehran and a major nuclear site in Fordow in central Iran.
He said the secure channel, planned to come on line in the next one or two years, would be able to carry 90-100 bits per seconds of data through an optic fiber network.
Quantum cryptography allows for the broadcasting of information between multiple parties in a perfectly secure manner under the sole assumption that the laws of quantum physics are valid.