Verizon taps into Chicago-New York low latency route

Targeted at global banks, hedge funds, market makers, pre- and post-trade service firms and money managers, the low latency offering has already been adopted by the CME Group. CME will use Verizon's service in its Aurora, Ill., data and colocation center to enable companies in Chicago and New York to trade on CME Group's platforms and exchange market data.

Leveraging Ciena's (Nasdaq: CIEN) 6500 Packet Optical Platform, the service provider said it can offer financial firms speeds as low as 14.5 milliseconds round trip to reduce latency. Any amount of latency could result in either the gain or loss of multi-million dollar deals for financial traders.

This new service, which is part of Verizon's Financial Network, enables it to stay on a competitive footing with a number of incumbent and competitive players such as Sidera Networks that are also offering their own suite of low latency services along this same route.