Broadcaster
A broadcaster carrying high-sensitivity live content - parliamentary proceedings, emergency communications or premium sports rights - where a passive tap is an unacceptable risk
Content protectionReady to pilotBuilt by Professional Services and LabsLast updated 29 July 2026
ZeroThirdLive contribution links that reveal any interception
A contribution link that carries sensitive live content can be intercepted without any evidence it happened, and an operator who cannot tell whether a feed was copied cannot act on it either. ZeroThird protects live signal transmission with quantum key distribution, so any attempt to listen in disturbs the key exchange and announces itself the moment it happens, while the feed keeps running.
Quantum CryptographyTamper DetectionSecure Key Exchange
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The problem this solves
Conventional encryption secures a contribution link against an attacker who lacks the key, but it offers no defence against a passive tap. A well-positioned adversary can copy the signal in transit, record it and break the encryption later - and the broadcaster never knows it happened. For high-sensitivity feeds such as parliamentary proceedings, emergency communications or premium live rights, that gap is unacceptable.
The root cause is that classical cryptography is built on computational hardness: it assumes breaking the key is too expensive today, not that it is physically impossible. Quantum key distribution removes that assumption entirely, because any measurement of a quantum channel disturbs it in a way that cannot be hidden.
Who this is for
This is relevant if you are:
Rights holder
A rights-holder whose contribution links cross third-party infrastructure and whose current encryption gives no indication of whether the feed has been copied in transit
Telco
A telco operating contribution or contribution-adjacent infrastructure that needs to offer a provably interception-evident transmission service to broadcast customers
How it works
- 1Two endpoints agree on a quantum channel alongside the conventional transmission path. Keys are generated from entangled photon pairs, so their secrecy rests on physics rather than on how expensive the key is to break.
- 2As the live signal is encrypted and transmitted, the quantum channel continuously generates and exchanges fresh key material between the two endpoints.
- 3Any interception attempt alters the quantum states in a detectable way. The system surfaces the anomaly as measurement errors in real time, flagging the intrusion the instant it happens.
- 4Key generation stops for as long as the disturbance lasts, because no secure key can be extracted from a channel that is being measured. Transmission is unaffected: it runs on key material already generated and stored locally, so the feed continues while the alert is raised, and key exchange resumes once the channel is clean.
- 5The Austrian Parliament-to-ORF link serves as the working proof of concept: live debates are transmitted end-to-end with continuous tamper evidence.
What makes it different
Most contribution-link security is about making the key hard to guess. ZeroThird approaches it from the other end: rather than trying to prevent interception, it aims to make interception detectable, because reading a quantum channel disturbs it and that disturbance shows up at both ends. The evidence therefore sits in the behaviour of the channel rather than in an audit log that could be falsified or delayed, which means the network and any intermediary carrying the link do not have to be trusted. It is designed to sit alongside an existing contribution workflow, where the quantum channel is an addition rather than a replacement for the transmission infrastructure.
Current status & next steps
Ready to pilotReviewed 29 July 2026
ZeroThird is ready to pilot. The Austrian Parliament-to-ORF deployment has validated the tamper-detection mechanism and the buffered-key model that keeps transmission running through a disturbance, on a real broadcast link over dedicated fibre. The core transmission and detection logic is built and has been tested under operational conditions.
The next step is a pilot with an additional broadcaster or rights-holder whose contribution infrastructure presents a different topology - inter-city or cross-border links are the most interesting candidates.
Interested in a pilot conversation?
Tell us what contribution infrastructure you need to protect and we will tell you exactly what a ZeroThird pilot would involve.