London Stock Exchange, Cable News Network Study Market Data Via Intelsat To Europe

The London Stock Exchange and Turner Broadcasting Co. are near a final decision on whether to launch a high-speed satellite ticker in Europe (MTR, October 1987). The service would piggyback on Turner's current Intelsat feed of Cable News Network, and enable users to receive a stream of real-time financial information through a small Ku-band dish.

It is by no means certain whether the project -- which has been testing for almost a year -- will receive the green light. It would face many hurdles, not the least of which would be obtaining government approvals to broadcast into user-owned terminals in the various European countries.

Officials at both organizations aren't inclined to elaborate about the project, which is being spearheaded by Robert Buckle, who heads an advanced development team in the Information Services group at the LSE, now known as the International Stock Exchange, and Robert Ross, managing director at CNN International Sales in London. Neither returned phone calls.

For its European CNN feed, Turner broadcasts from Atlanta to an Atlantic Ocean transponder it leases from Intelsat. The transponder is cross-strapped, so that it uplinks at C-band but downlinks at Ku-band. In much of Europe, acceptable video quality is available from a 1.2-meter dish.

A data channel operating at several hundred kilobits/second has been visible on the transponder for almost a year, but its purpose only recently became known. While it's still "very much pie-in-the-sky," the LSE has had a long-standing interest in providing a "super ticker," a consolidated feed of quotes from all of the major exchanges in the world, says Tudor Morgan, who runs the New York office of LSE's Topic Services, Inc.

LSE's Topic would presumably form the informational core of the proposed service, with the remaining international exchange data being provided by London-based Pont International, formerly Bridge Data International. Pont chief Greg Moore won't comment on the project. Whether it would interfere with Pont's plans to launch a "world ticker" as part of its co-owned PC Quote International service (MTR, May 1986) isn't clear.

The Turner strategy apparently is that this quote service, which would also include news, would go everywhere in the world that CNN goes, which now includes Tokyo as well as the U.S. and Europe. CNN is available on cable in the U.K., France, Sweden, and Finland, and in some form in 54 countries.

Whether such widespread distribution would be possible for a direct-to-user service isn't known. Few countries are as liberal as the U.S. about users owning receive-only satellite terminals or picking up transmissions originating in foreign lands. "I think it will take them a little bit of time to get this implemented," says Joseph Pelton, vice president at Intelsat.

LSE's Morgan is careful to distinguish between the satellite project and the LSE's previously-announced low-end quote service using the BBC Datacast system (MTR, December 1986). The Datacast service -- recently launched as "Market-Eye" -- was developed "bottom-up" based on user demand, and reports in through the Information Services marketing department.

The proposed satellite service, on the other hand, was promulgated "top-down" and is "very conceptual," says Morgan. Its development effort reports directly to Information Services chief George Hayter. The LSE has denied previous reports that it plans a high-speed satellite service (MTR, April 1987).