Switzerland’s state-owned telecom and postal services, Swisscom AG and Swiss Post Ltd., today announced the launch of a government-run distributed-ledger blockchain platform with business ease-of-use in mind.

The data on the blockchain system will remain entirely within Switzerland and the infrastructure is designed to meet the requirements of big banks and regulations for the finance industry.

Swisscom and the Swiss Post will each use existing private infrastructures to provide distributed blockchain nodes. The idea is to distribute cryptographic ledgers that can be checked against each other to make them tamperproof, allowing for quick and trustworthy transactions across the network.

“This [relationship] enables more efficient agreement procedures as well as significantly higher security and performance,” Armin Schädeli, deputy head of media relations at Swisscom, said in a statement. “This is an important prerequisite for many companies to launch their own applications based on blockchain technology. Swiss Post and Swisscom are thus creating attractive advantages for companies in all sectors and therefore also for Switzerland as a business location.”

To connect together, the two companies will use a common infrastructure based on the Hyperledger Fabric2 software developed by the Linux Foundation. The Hyperledger Project is an open-source blockchain platform supported by numerous large corporations, including IBM Corp., Intel Corp., JPMorgan Chase and Co., SAP SE and Swisscom.

Both companies already have some experience in the blockchain market that they will be bringing to the table in this partnership.

Swiss Post uses a blockchain platform to store temperature measurement data in a secure, distributed manner that is used to track the safety of pharmaceutical and other perishable shipments. The organization’s financial unit, PostFinance, uses “Blockchain for Utility” in a pilot with Energie Wasser Bern AG, a Swiss utility company, to enable house owners with photovoltaic systems to receive bills automatically for the power that they use.

Swisscom is currently developing a blockchain solution, alongside its subsidiary daura AG, to provide the ability to create digital securities, shares and other assets for companies.

The market launch of the first blockchain pilot applications is planned for the first quarter of 2019. The initial offerings will be geared toward companies and public authorities, especially those seeking to handle sensitive digital business processes securely and verifiably.

“In order to support the operation of the infrastructure for blockchain applications even more broadly,” Schädeli said, “Swiss Post and Swisscom are open to accepting other partners who would like to participate in the infrastructure.”

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