EXA Takes to the Air to Cut Transatlantic Latency Down Another Notch

EXA Infrastructure said today that it plans to introduce a new hybrid route across the Atlantic. The move will give them a new, lower latency path between New York and London.

The new route will leverage the EXA Express cable, which is already the shortest path. But instead of going the whole way under the ocean from Nova Scotia to Brean, the idea is take the branch to the Irish city of Cork and then leverage microwave links the rest of the way. Microwave is faster due to the difference between the speed of light in air versus in fiberoptic cable.

The heyday of buzz for low latency trading infrastructure is perhaps over, but the reasons for it still drive the financial vertical in key ways. EXA isn’t saying how many microseconds they will be able to cut off the NY-London route, but it’s about 350 miles from Cork to London. A rough calculation says there’s in the neighborhood of 0.85 milliseconds available just by going the hybrid route, though I’m sure it’s less than that after other factors are considered.

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Categories: Undersea cables