In an industry dominated by numbers, time—especially in milliseconds—is another set of numbers high-frequency and crypto traders take seriously. Every trader knows the thrill of being able to beat the market: execute transactions instantly, ahead of the rest, at the best possible price. And every millisecond can mean the difference between profit and loss, leading the market and lagging.
But few stops to ask: what made beating the market possible?
From executing a trade across continents in under 10 milliseconds in Europe to just under 40 milliseconds between Asian financial powerhouses in Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong, the true enabler lies in the power of precision-engineered infrastructure that drives every trade. Subsea cables, edge computing nodes, colocation near exchanges, and private trading networks—these are the invisible highways traders rely on every day.
Lower latency allows traders to react faster to market changes. In crypto markets, latency is equally critical. Millisecond delays can lead to less favourable execution prices, especially where algorithms operate in microseconds. Price slippage and missed arbitrage opportunities are common risks when latency is high.
Today’s trading landscape demands ultra-high-speed, low-latency, point-to-point connections. The shift to 400G and 800G optical networking is necessary for moving massive volumes of data across continents in real time. Edge computing is expanding, with AI inference and trading workloads shifting closer to the source of data to reduce latency and improve performance.
For traders, this means reacting to market shifts in microseconds, not milliseconds. As highlighted in our eBook “Milliseconds to Millions”, public internet routes introduce unpredictable latency and cyber risk. For traders, that’s unacceptable. Not just fast networks, traders need networks that think ahead.
While trading institutions focus on algorithms and execution speed, the physical infrastructure beneath the ocean is just as critical. Over the past two decades, our extensive digital infrastructure and connectivity services across Asia Pacific— including our wholly owned EAC and C2C subsea cable system —have seen fault levels decline significantly. This means fewer disruptions, greater reliability, and more consistent low latency for trading routes connecting Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and other financial hubs.
The future of trading infrastructure is adaptive. Bandwidth will surge to support data-hungry algorithms. Edge computing will become the standard, shaving microseconds off execution times. And as market structures evolve, infrastructure must be agile enough to keep pace.
Behind every low-latency route is a team of engineers, architects, and strategists who understand the stakes. They know that when volatility spikes, infrastructure must hold steady; that when traders push the limits, the network must respond.
Is your infrastructure ready for what’s next? Because in trading, milliseconds make millions. And the backbone of that success isn’t just AI, it’s the infrastructure that lets AI perform.
