Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) has announced plans to offer ultra-low latency data between markets in the U.S. and Europe, making the offering the fastest possible from a market data offering standpoint, according to Nicolas Bonnet, Director, Global Connectivity Product at ICE.
“We should be able to start testing at the end of this month or early next one. We go live in October in Slough and Frankfurt, and later this year for the remaining endpoints in London Metro and Bergamo,” Bonnet told Traders Magazine.
This solution will combine a system of wireless networks on each continent with high-speed transatlantic fiber.
The first route will be transporting data coming out of the Aurora data center, home of the CME in Illinois to multiple locations across the London Metro Area and Europe, such as Frankfurt and Bergamo, Bonnet explained.
“It’s a hybrid solution. We mix wireless and fiber. By combining all the assets together, we achieve what we think is going to be the lowest latency possible for market data,” he said.
ICE is planning to launch additional hybrid routes between Europe and the U.S. (both Eastbound and Westbound).
“Later on, we’re going to look into moving all more market data from one continent to another, but we started with the CME data eastbound, because we think this is the one that’s the most beneficial to the industry,” Bonnet said.
Once the product is live, ICE wants to have “meaningful conversations” with customers to understand what would be the most beneficial next phases for them, said Bonnet.
“We need to work with our customers to identify where we should go next, because we have a lot of ideas on the whiteboard,” he said.
According to Bonnet, ICE Data’s customers include algo traders at Tier-1 banks and HFT proprietary firms, regardless of their size.
“The data is going to feed servers and algos; we’re talking about milliseconds to transport financial information from one continent to another one,” he said.
The new trans-Atlantic data service adds an important new route that not only offers ultra-low latency, but also optimizes cost for investors, said Bonnet.
Designed and built to minimize latency, this offering enables market participants to work with a single vendor to simplify operational challenges related to building and supporting a global end-to-end market data solution.
“If you want to achieve the lowest latency possible using terrestrial or subsea technology, you need to stitch assets together. For customers it is quite complex and expensive to build and operate such an end-to-end solution,” Bonnet commented.
The new service will complement ICE’s existing offering and will leverage the existing data delivery platform to ease integration for customers and provide a consistent service, including a comprehensive fiber back-up, Bonnet said.
