Telstra has strengthened its offering for the financial services sector with the launch today of the lowest latency international connectivity between the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and the Singapore Exchange (SGX).

The Australian Liquidity Centre is the ASX’s purpose-built financial markets data centre, while the SGX’s Co-Location facility houses its trading, market data and clearing infrastructure.

Matthew Lempriere, Telstra’s Global Head of Financial Services Market Segment, said the investment was driven by customer demand in both markets and built on existing services that Telstra rolled out last year for financial markets in Chicago, Hong Kong and London.

“Today, millisecond improvements in network speed can be what it takes to get the edge over the competition. This new connection is highly scalable and easily handles fast-changing bandwidth demands, common among low latency financial trading.”

According to Mr Lempriere, the route is enabled by Telstra’s new 100Gbps capacity low latency optical link from Sydney to Perth (two key entry and exit points of international traffic to and from Australia), with an extension from Sydney to Melbourne ready for 200Gbps services.

By carrying 100Gbps in a single wavelength, this significantly improves the delivery and reliability of data transfers and the critical trans-Australian route from Sydney to Perth is now lowest latency, under 20 milliseconds and 25 per cent lower than the current route.

“We believe this new route between these two financial hubs will become a one-stop-shop for our customers' low latency global connectivity needs, enabling an estimated 91.5 millisecond Round Trip Delay from Sydney to Singapore.

“As a result, it will also drive participation across Singapore and Australia by a larger number of global trading firms, who are seeking the next generation of growth opportunities and looking to capitalise on trading opportunities between these marketplaces,” Mr Lempriere concluded.

Telstra’s new connectivity is backed up by comprehensive Service Level Agreements, while Low Round Trip Delay makes it a safer option for businesses operating globally or in diverse geographies.