McKay Brothers, a Geneva-based network provider for trading firms, is opening a microwave data link between the UK and Germany to speed up transactions.

Using the fiber of conventional telecoms networks is blisteringly fast but financial players are so sensitive about speed they want to reduce this further to try and steal a march on the competition. Trading firms either build their own low-latency network or buy capacity from vendors. McKay charges US$8200 per month for access to its network.

Data takes only 2.176 microseconds to go from London to Frankfurt  and McKay hopes to shave an infinitesimal amount off that time by using a single wireless link between the London suburb of Basildon and the German city of Frankfurt which of course will operate at the speed of light.

Microwaves, with a small wavelength and good propagation, have been in use for point-to-point communications for more than 50 years, by the military and broadcast television stations, among others. for point-to-point connections.

McKay co-founder Stephane Tyc told Bloomberg that if once the new equipment has been switched on and it proves faster than its current arrangement it would move its Quincy Extreme Data service to its own bandwidth.

The company will also activate a line from Slough to Frankfurt which Tyc confirmed ‘should come on the heels of the Basildon line pretty quickly.’

Earlier in the year Chicago-based Jump Trading LLC purchased an 800 ft microwave tower in Belgium. The tower was previously used by NATO to transmit messages from US armed forces during the Cold War.