Avelacom connects to South Africa

Connectivity provider Avelacom is extending its network to South Africa in a bid to provide market participants with low-latency access to the country’s financial marketplace.

The new point of presence between London and Johannesburg provides market participants with a 155.8-millisecond round-trip latency connection to and from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

The route, which runs along the western coast of Africa, is also backed up by a 100G data connection passing along the eastern coast.

“We have closed the quality gap in connectivity between London and Johannesburg, which was previously a barrier to trading volume growth,” says Aleksey Larichev, managing director of Avelacom.

“Our main focus was to create backup connections, which allowed us to reach [a] 99.9% uptime guarantee and meet the expectations of our global financial institution clients,” he adds.

While the Russian connectivity provider’s client base has traditionally been high-frequency trading firms, Avelacom has been expanding with larger US and UK trading firms less obsessed with speed and more focused on quality.

Founded in 2001, the firm’s first low-latency connection was completed in 2013, linking London to Moscow. It was subsequently extended to Tokyo and then Shanghai.

Asia and China

Over the past few years an increasing number of the firm’s customers have been asking for connectivity to South-east Asia and China.

Demand for low-latency connections to China is particularly focused on access to commodity exchanges, but more recently, Avelacom has received requests for links to digital asset-trading platforms in the country.

Avelacom’s connectivity network to Hong Kong and Singapore is predominantly of interest to clients seeking access to FX trading venues and other regional financial centres, such as the Indian market.