‘Race to zero’ hots up as traders benefit from faster trading speeds of up to 40%
London, 14 November 2012
Colt Technology Services today announced that it has introduced a microwave service between London and Frankfurt. The new service will complement Colt’s existing ultra low latency fibre services and makes Colt the first managed services provider to offer both microwave and fibre ultra-low latency services between these two significant trading centres. The new microwave service will enable trading houses to reduce the time it takes to access the market by up to 40%, enabling traders to enjoy faster access to the German derivatives market, which has already recorded a 27 per cent increase in the number of completed trades in 2012.
Microwave technologies are proven to deliver significant speed advantages because they benefit from “line of sight” implementation which nearly always means the route will be physically shorter than that taken by fibre only networks. In an industry where being first to market matters, microwave services will give trading firms the option of significantly lower latency.
“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.”
The first customers will go live on the London to Frankfurt microwave route in December.
About Colt in Financial Services resources
Colt Technology Services has earned its reputation over the last 20 years by providing financial services clients, including 24 of the world’s top financial institutions and 13 EU Central Banks, with reliable, secure and fast services designed for the financial services market. Colt’s IT, networking and communications solutions include proximity hosting and direct connectivity to stock exchanges across Europe and MTFs in London, Tokyo and Frankfurt, using secure low latency point to point ethernet links.
Colt brings a significant asset base, in terms of network and data centres, along with experience in helping companies take advantage of the very latest technology to address the challenges of a continuously changing regulatory environment and the ever present need to increase speed to market and generate revenue from new markets.
Colt’s subsidiary, MarketPrizm, offers a range of services which include raw and normalized market data delivered to clients on PrizmNet, the ultra fast and dedicated multi-venue connectivity infrastructure for the financial trading industry.
Through MarketPrizm and sister company KVH, Colt offers a complete trading ecosystem to its clients.
Colt is the information delivery platform, enabling its customers to deliver, share, process and store their vital business information. An established leader in delivering integrated computing and network services to major organisations, midsized businesses and wholesale customers, Colt operates a 22-country, 43,000km network that includes metropolitan area networks in 39 major European cities with direct fibre connections into 18,000 buildings and 20 carrier neutral Colt data centres.
In 2010, the Colt Data Centre Services business was launched to deliver innovative high quality data centre solutions at a Colt or customer site. Our Innovative data centres are rapid to deploy, flexible and highly efficient.
In addition to its direct sales capability, Colt has four indirect channels to market; Agent, Franchise, Distributor and Wholesale which includes Carriers, Service Providers, VARs and Voice Resellers.
Colt is listed on the London Stock Exchange (COLT).
Press contacts
Colt, François d’Essertaux
DDI: +44(0)20 7863 2953
Mobile: +44 (0) 7538 095 485
Email: francois.dessertaux@colt.net
Weber Shandwick, Tim Focas
DDI: +44 (0)207 067 0532
Mobile : +44 (0)783 5517 004
Email: tim.focas@webershandwick.com
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