High-Speed Trader DRW Proposes Thousand-Foot-Plus Tower in Rural England
Height will ensure even Earth’s curvature won’t impede ability to transmit data to continental Europe
A Chicago company plans to build a tower in rural England 30 feet higher than London’s tallest skyscraper. But nobody will work, live or dine in the Richborough Mast.
Instead, the thousand-foot-plus structure is planned for near the Kentish seaside and is intended to beam microwaves across the English channel for high-frequency-trading firms.
Its height will ensure that even the Earth’s curvature won’t impede its ability to transmit data to continental Europe. Such technology has been deployed extensively by trading firms and exchange groups in recent years in order to trim microseconds off the time it takes to transmit information.
High-speed traders rely on this information to make a profit, and an advantage of microseconds could mean the difference between profiting from a trade or losing out to competitors.
Vigilant Global, a Canadian telecommunications company owned by Chicago’s DRW Trading, submitted plans in August 2015 to construct the 320-meter mast in Richborough, Kent, according to an application submitted to Dover District Council.
DRW Trading, one of the world’s largest high-speed-trading firms, trades on more than three-dozen exchanges. It is part of a group of firms that rely on ultralow-latency technology to trade their own capital at high speeds and in high volumes.
According to information provided on a website for local residents by Vigilant, the tower would “provide a new communications point between the UK and Europe” with a “completely unobstructed” optical and radio line of sight.
The tower would be the sixth-tallest structure in the U.K. and taller than London’s Shard skyscraper, the highest occupied building in the U.K. at 310 meters.
“With this giant mast Vigilant will have a global path not so far from a straight line, at least from Richborough to Germany,” said Alexandre Laumonier, who tracks public records on microwave networks for his Sniper in Mahwah blog.
Microwave transmissions traveling through the air aren’t affected by the “friction” in traditional wiring that can slow data transmission. But the technology does have drawbacks. The transmitters and receivers must have line-of-sight contact, meaning engineers must factor in the curvature of the Earth when deciding the heights for radio masts.
The masts also can take only limited amounts of traffic, meaning that a number of towers used by high-speed trading firms are heavily oversubscribed. Erecting tall masts is among several ways companies are looking to establish communications networks to improve data transmission. These include the use of high-altitude balloons, which are being explored by companies including Google parent Alphabet Inc. through its so-called Project Loon.
The Richborough Mast is in the preplanning stage. It is currently undergoing an environmental impact study and will require approval from both local and national governmental authorities.
A spokeswoman for DRW and Vigilant said the company has been “working closely with local and national government agencies and meeting with the public in the surrounding communities on the proposal.” It also said it was joining “with local organizations to provide public benefits from the mast, including community radio, wireless broadband access and education.”
Bernard Butcher, a local councillor on the Dover District Council, said he wasn’t aware of any strong opposition to the plan, adding that “most people are ambivalent about it.”