SINGAPORE: A new 7,800 kilometer submarine cable is linking Tokyo with Singapore via the Philippines and Malaysia. The Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) aims to boost the speed of data being transferred across the region. According to the Silva Research Network, the new cable delivers data via the optical fiber system at 40 gigabits per second and is three milliseconds faster than any other cable already laid connection Singapore with Tokyo. According to experts, while the difference seems small, it will be critical to financial trades from outside 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, was reported as saying by BBC News. “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. “As all incoming data is received by all banks at the same time, and because the computers are all the same with the same speed of processors, the length of time the command takes to get to the exchange makes a big difference. “So if all banks come to the same trading decision at the same time, the one to get the transaction to the master computer first wins,” he continued. “Three milliseconds in computer time is an hour in human time.”
