The advantages of faster connectivity are rarely questioned these days, with consumers told it will improve their access to lifestyle and content services and enterprise users focused on improved productivity. Often the touted benefits are, to a degree, abstract. But in the world of high-frequency financial trading (HFT), the benefits are very measurable and very significant.

High-frequency traders use super-fast computers to trade automatically hundreds of times a second, often arbitraging tiny price differences between stocks listed on different venues. Added up over the course of time, the combined value of all those tiny profitable trades quickly builds into vast mountains of cash.