> I am not sure this is a good prediction ... the shaving of milliseconds that has been pursued by HFT firms (and other such actors) has progressed to the point where they are measuring cable lengths inside the datacenter.
You're conflating optimisation of latency within a colo - how quickly can you send an order in response to seeing an event on that exchange - with latency between colos - how quickly can you send an order in response to seeing an event on another exchange.
Within a colo, latency is measured in microseconds and fractions of a microsecond. Between colos, it's milliseconds. Some random source here has 4.13 ms for New York - Chicago:
At the moment, to play that game, you need to build a microwave network. Someone needs to build towers in a line between your two exchanges - buy the land, get planning permission, placate the locals, build the tower, install microwave antennas, hope the weather is okay. That's expensive!
With Starlink, there will be a reasonably direct path between any two points on earth - on demand! The path will be longer than a dedicated microwave chain, although some of it will be in vacuum, which will save some time, but it will cost the end user no money and no time to build. If you come up with a trade idea that needs a low-latency path from Moscow to Stockholm, you can send a request to the Starlink API and just get one in moments. You can be up and running with your trade months or years before a tower-building competitor even joins the game.
The thing is people have already built most of those microwave tower paths here on earth and in addition SpaceX probably isn't going to set it up as a mesh where intra-Starlink traffic stays goes directly. And even if they do you have to go up then across (probably in a zig zag) then back down which will always be higher latency than the point to point microwave distance.
>people have already built most of those microwave tower paths here on earth
I can assure you that lucrative paths like New York-London and New York-Tokyo have not been built yet. In fact, the vast majority of lucrative trading paths have not been built yet due to geographical restrictions. Yes, fiber optic links exist, but those only go up to 0.7c.
To a trading firm, the choice between a satellite link that does ~0.9c and a fiber optic link that does <0.7c is obvious.
That all depends on Starlink supporting point to point inside their network. Also that path will be more zig-zaggy than the great circle fiber path and importantly will vary during the day as the satellite tracks shift relative to earth. [0]
[0] Unless their in a harmonic orbit I guess not 100% sure abou that one. There should always be some jitter in the connection time just from the satellites moving even if their ground tracks are very stable.
I don't know enough about their infrastructure, but presumably SpaceX could offer that as a premium service? "Most direct" path for your data at a much higher dollar-per-MB cost vs the mesh offering?
You're conflating optimisation of latency within a colo - how quickly can you send an order in response to seeing an event on that exchange - with latency between colos - how quickly can you send an order in response to seeing an event on another exchange.
Within a colo, latency is measured in microseconds and fractions of a microsecond. Between colos, it's milliseconds. Some random source here has 4.13 ms for New York - Chicago:
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/11/final-frontie...
At the moment, to play that game, you need to build a microwave network. Someone needs to build towers in a line between your two exchanges - buy the land, get planning permission, placate the locals, build the tower, install microwave antennas, hope the weather is okay. That's expensive!
With Starlink, there will be a reasonably direct path between any two points on earth - on demand! The path will be longer than a dedicated microwave chain, although some of it will be in vacuum, which will save some time, but it will cost the end user no money and no time to build. If you come up with a trade idea that needs a low-latency path from Moscow to Stockholm, you can send a request to the Starlink API and just get one in moments. You can be up and running with your trade months or years before a tower-building competitor even joins the game.