Colt Taps NPL for Co-Lo Data, Trade Timing Info

The deal will provide Precision Time Protocol—based on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) sourced from NPL—to clients co-located within datacenters operated by Equinix and Interxion in Slough and the City of London, respectively, though the vendor may expand it to more locations based on client demand.

The timing agreement is designed to help firms meet pan-European regulation Mifid II’s RTS 25 requirement that all market participants’ trading systems must be synchronized to within 100 microseconds, and to eliminate instances of mis-calibration, jamming and spoofing.

“Mis-calibration, jamming and spoofing are all particular to GPS signals delivered through the air from satellites. These signals can be intercepted and altered, or blocked completely. Colt and NPL’s solution is delivered by a fiber network that is intrinsically resilient to this type of attack. It’s much harder to intercept a signal carried by a fiber buried in the ground than a signal freely transmitted over the air,” says Arthur Rank, director at Colt Capital Markets.

However, NPL officials say GPS signals can be subject to more innocent explanations—though with no less significant results. “A few of the issues we have come across include offsets to UTC being implemented with the wrong sign (doubling the error), incompatible systems causing large random errors and outages due to interferences,” says Dr. Leon Lobo, strategic business development director for time and frequency at NPL.

Previously, Colt used GPS-based timing, localized in datacenters in London, the US and Asia. Lobo says a proportion of the market continues to use GPS timing without calibration.

“Firms can use GNSS (e.g. GPS or GLONASS) as long as they calibrate and monitor the signals, and ensure risks due to interferences like jamming and spoofing are mitigated. Alternatively, there are approx. 75 UTC(k) labs globally, UTC (NPL) being the UK’s only timing laboratory. Every industrial nation tends to have one. They all can deliver traceability to UTC,” Lobo says.

Colt plans to roll out the precision timing service to more locations based on client demand. While not providing specific details of how much additional locations will cost, NPL’s commercial model “is based on the number of access points the customer needs to implement,” Lobo says.

Colt officials confirm that the timing information will attract additional fees, but decline to specify them. “This is a new service with additional value to Colt’s capital markets community, but it has been carefully considered, and delivers the appropriate value,” Rank says.