14 DAY TRIAL // The internet has grown exponentially since it was invented. In the last decade, the volume of traffic has grown several times over. Yet, the last transatlantic telecommunications cable was laid out more than a decade ago.
Now, a submarine communication cable company is planning to build a new one, to start carrying data in 2013. The first surveys of the American coast have already started.
Surprisingly enough though, it's not bandwidth that the new cable hopes to add, instead it's designed to be the fastest transatlantic cable around, i.e. the one to get data to the other side in the shortest amount of time.
Currently, the fastest transatlantic cable sends data from Boston to Dublin in 65 milliseconds. The new cable, Hibernian Express, will shave off five or maybe even six milliseconds from that.
That's enough for the company building it to justify the $300 million investment, since this is how much it will cost to bring the cable from the US to Europe, 6,021 km apart.
Even with the high cost and the seemingly marginal improvement in performance, the company building the cable says it's got customers lining up to use it. What's more, they're willing to pay 50 times as much for the connection than they would for any of the other cables linking the two continents.
What's the secret, well, all of the customers are traders, financial companies that engage in high-speed, computerized trading. Here, every millisecond counts and a five millisecond advantage could be a huge boon to a company's bottom line.
So much so that no one can afford to let others be the fastest, so anyone in the business is lining up to link up via the new faster cable. Some estimates say that one millisecond advantage could add up to $100 million more in revenue in a year for one of these companies. [via The Telegraph]