McKay Brothers Expands Into Asia With Tokyo-Singapore Route

McKay is using a hybrid microwave and fiber path─terrestrial microwave in Japan plus fiber under the large bodies of water between the countries─to deliver Asia-sourced market data on its Quincy Extreme Data (QED) service. The initial data offering will be select futures data from the Osaka Securities Exchange delivered to Singapore, but Jim Considine, McKay board member and head of business development and strategy for all McKay affiliates, says the vendor expects to expand its coverage of regional routes based on client demand and as it begins connecting additional cities.

"We're looking at many opportunities, and top of the list right now are Hong Kong and Taiwan," Consindine says, adding that these should be "up and running" in 2017.

Considine declines to specify how much of an improvement the new route will offer users, compared to existing offerings, but says McKay's route is "well below 63 milliseconds roundtrip, while the lowest known latency previously is well above 63 microseconds."

The route builds on existing services in Europe and Asia. "Building the route in the US was pretty obvious to us. Building a route between the UK and Frankfurt was pretty clearly a good thing to do. This route was a marriage of an idea that we wanted to execute on and customer demand," Considine says.

In establishing its first Asia route, Considine says McKay encountered some distinct challenges that it hadn't yet experienced in the US or Europe. "The precision and expense of engineering standards in Japan were surprising. We prepared ourselves for that, but we still thought that was a real challenge," he says.

Now live, officials say the route will offer Asia traders and risk managers a "level playing field" for the best latency between Tokyo and Singapore. Considine says McKay has immediate demand from existing clients, but adds that the vendor also hopes to appeal to local firms.