Two years ago Swale borough council received applications to install hi-tech microwave dishes on a wartime tower. The Kentish radar block has a distinguished history. It was one of a series along Britain’s east coast that played a frontline role for air defence in the Battle of Britain. It was listed in 2002. Today the relic in the village of Dunkirk is the new front in the scramble for speed between high-frequency trading firms, or HFTs, in the City. Companies such as Jump Trading, Optiver, Getco and Flow Traders have been busy installing microwave dishes across Britain, from the old radar station at Swingate in Dover to Dunkirk, across London and on to Land’s End in Cornwall. The goal is to link exchanges in the
High-frequency trading firms have been utilising old radar stations in the UK to install microwave technology which is at least 30% faster than optical fibre. Flow Traders, which recently listed in the Netherlands, stated that Europe's markets are more fragmented that those in the US. Next month Land’s End, a new transatlantic fibre-optic cable goes into operation shaving six thousandths of a second of the data transmission time between London and New York at a cost of $300mn.