En fordel for finanshandelen og udbedrer samtidig skadevirkningerne fra flere kabler på havbunden, som er ødelagt ved jordskælv de senere år – ikke mindst på Filippinerne er man begejstret for det nye undersøiske data-lyntog.
A new high-speed undersea data cable has opened to traffic in Asia, BBC online reports Sunday.
The 7.800 km Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) connects Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines.
It transfers data via an optical fibre system at 40 gigabits per second, and is three milliseconds faster than any other cable between Singapore and Tokyo.
The gain in speed may sound small, but could prove critical to financial trades made out of the region.
So-called “high frequency trades”, controlled by computers, involve making what may be hundreds of thousands of transactions in less than a second – all determined by a program that tracks market conditions.
With banks and hedge funds competing against each other, the size of the profit or loss can come down to a matter of beating the competition by a fraction of a second, explained Ralph Silva, a strategist at Silva Research Network.
“High frequency trading is basically computer trading – you program a set of rules and as events happen – the computer decides buy or sell commands,” he said.
