AboveNet Launches High-Speed London-New York Link

AboveNet says it’s sold half the capacity of its new low-latency transatlantic connectivity service since it launched two weeks ago. The dark fibre provider says it now plans to establish a second 10Gigabit ethernet pipe linking London and New York, and expects to add a third within the coming year.

The low-latency transatlantic service complements the company’s low-latency metro services to offer customers in the financial services sector direct low-latency access to facilities such as the London Stock Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange and multilateral trading facilities Chi-X and Bats.

It selected the AC-1 undersea cable, operated by Global Crossing and Level 3, as it has the shortest transatlantic route and then takes a terrestrial route from a south coast landing point through Slough to the City of London, again the shortest route, and on to Docklands. In the New York metro area, the service reaches financial locations in Manhattan and New Jersey including Newark, Weehawken, Secaucus, Carteret and Clifton.

“With venues such as Chi-X now operating out of Equinix in Slough and Nasdaq operating out of Carteret, NJ, we are seeing a growing requirement for low-latency transatlantic connectivity,” says John Donaldson, AboveNet senior vice president and managing director UK.

He cites the Slough to City link as being particularly important as many data centres have been built in the Slough area since government requirements required financial services firms to move back offices away from front-office sites. AboveNet finished laying fibre-optic cable, to replace leased capacity, alongside rail tracks from Slough to the City a couple of weeks ago and intends to offer managed low-latency 1Gbit and 10Gbit ethernet network services from North America to the City of London in two or three weeks’ time.

Describing the low-latency transatlantic connectivity as a natural extension to its low-latency metro services, AboveNet suggests that its total package will offer financial services clients a better end-to-end deal than attempts to stitch together different network stages. It anticipates demand for its services from organisations such as investment banks, hedge fund operators and foreign exchange and equities traders, with initial applications likely to be foreign exchange trading and market data feeds.

Donaldson acknowledges that cable operators such as Global Crossing and Level 3 are competitors in offering low-latency connectivity services, but he points out that while they cross the Atlantic, they are unlikely to have an abundance of low-latency metro and access services.

“Previously, big financial institutions could buy low-latency services on AC-1 and piece them together with backhaul and metro services. Now they can buy all the services they need from one place. No-one focuses as much as we do on low-latency and although our services command premium prices, people will pay them,” he says.

The attraction of AboveNet’s services is not only end-to-end low-latency, but also a guarantee of low latency offered under the company’s Agility Guarantee programme. For example, if a London to New York service has a latency of 66.5 milliseconds, AboveNet will provide a service level agreement (SLA) of 66.95 milliseconds to be sure to deliver within required parameters. If it fails to meet an SLA, the company offers customers the right to cancel their contracts.

“There are limits behind latency. The best way to reduce it is to take the shortest direct connectivity route and remove legacy equipment form the network. Reducing the latency in network connectivity is probably the easiest part of this, so organisations that can gain advantages on the network will take the opportunity,” Donaldson says.

Looking forward, AboveNet will strive to fulfil client demand for ever lower latency and is planning a major move back into Europe, which it left after the dot-com bust in 2002. Its first approach includes IP and VPN services, but later intentions include building low-latency infrastructure and metro services in cities such as Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris. For now, Donaldson says: “Our focus is to be a high bandwidth connectivity supplier with access to every possible data centre used by our large customers.”