AT&T partners with D‑Wave to cut network dispatch time from an hour to 15 seconds

AT&T has entered a quantum‑computing partnership with D‑Wave, integrating the latter’s annealing technology into its network‑operations workflow. A test of a field‑technician dispatch problem that previously required about an hour of compute time was completed in roughly 15 seconds, a speed‑up of around 240×. The result was highlighted at D‑Wave’s Qubits 2026 user conference.

The companies say the accelerated processing will be extended to other high‑intensity tasks such as outage detection and response, technician routing, network‑build planning and traffic management, supporting AT&T’s expanding fiber and 5G infrastructure. D‑Wave reported a $10 million, two‑year Quantum Computing as a Service agreement with a Fortune‑100 firm, delivered via its Leap cloud platform with 99.9 % uptime. AT&T’s data‑science director Lucus Haugen noted that the quantum speedup “challenges what’s currently possible” and could help the telecom giant scale real‑time operations.

AT&T’s network operations already use AI tools that saved about 12 million outage hours in 2025, and the quantum boost is expected to further improve efficiency and cost savings across its U.S. network.