Colt Technology Services today announced that it has introduced a microwave service between London and Frankfurt. The new service is in addition to Colt’s existing ultra-low latency fiber optic services and makes Colt the first managed services provider to offer both microwave and fiber ultra-low latency services between these two market centers. The company stated that the new microwave service will allow brokers and other Execution venues to reduce the time it takes to access the German market by up to 40%.
Microwave technologies potentially deliver significant speed advantages because they benefit from line-of-sight access. Essentially, this means that data is transmitted through the air “as the crow flies” from the point of origination. Thus, this usually means the route will be physically shorter than a route taken by fiber only networks ( which has multiple hardware hops such as routers and so forth). Microwave networks minimize latency since the path is the most direct and there is equipment to traverse.
From the company’s release, “Our customers are always looking for speed to market advantage,” said Andy Young, low latency specialist at Colt. “What is significant about Colt’s announcement is that we can offer both fibre and microwave services to our customers. This allows us to provide commercially flexible packages that ensure our customers can take advantage of using the speed of microwave where it will make the most difference. Colt’s ability to offer both fibre and microwave removes the additional cost of buying services from separate providers but it also means the customer only has one service provider to manage. The ability to build a technology-based offering with flexible commercial and high quality service elements provides a compelling proposition as customers continue to be under pressure to do deliver more to the business with lower budgets.”
Young concluded: “A combination of both microwave and fibre is the latest technology weapon in a high frequency trader’s armoury, as the race for more market Liquidity gathers pace. This is part of Colt’s continued investment in capital markets – a strategy which will see us build on our heritage of offering best-in-class latency connectivity, whether microwave or fibre, across major trading routes. Colt offers a complete trading ecosystem for its clients through services from sister company KVH in Asia and market data services from Colt subsidiary MarketPrizm.”
