Chicago-based Twin Lakes Ventures plans to next month roll out microwave service between the Chicaco Mercantile Exchange’s Aurora, Il data centre and the popular proximity centre and telecom carrier hotel at 350 East Cermak Street in downtown Chicago.
Twin Lakes is tapping the services of CCSI, whose principals founded the company. CCSI designs, builds and maintains wireless communications networks and facilities, the company having several years of experience of building microwave backhauls for carriers. Now, the company offers turnkey solutions, leveraging its in-house staff, choosing not to outsource functions in order to maintain high quality.
The Aurora to Chicago service will provide four channels, each with 160 mbps capacity. CCSI principal Gene Callahan is not saying how fast it will be, but is confident it will beat existing fibre connections. The microwave link has just two hops and is very close to the “as the crow flies” distance of about 33 miles. Callahan says customers are already signed up to use the service, though the company has just begun marketing to add more.
The 350 Cermak facility – which once housed the CME’s core matching engines before their move to Aurora – is home to markets like IntercontinentalExchange, as well as several proximity services operated by the likes of Equinix and Telx. It’s also a key connectivity point from other cities and is served by a number of market data vendors. As such, it is a popular building in which to locate trading systems that require access to multiple markets.
For the future, Callahan says that Twin Lakes is “working on several of the obvious – and not so obvious – locations around the world to provide microwave networks serving low-latency customers.”
