"Market Makers" Want to Expand Their Use of Shortwave
Market Makers Want to Expand Their Use of Shortwave
The FCC seeks comments on a proposal to use HF spectrum for financial data
BY RANDY J. STINE
PUBLISHED: JULY 9, 2023
An example of signal strength predictions from the technical study submitted by the SMC with its petition to the FCC. In this example the desired signal is being sent from Chicago to the east.
The FCC is taking public comment on a proposal to revise the rules governing the frequencies above 2 MHz and below 25 MHz. ... The Shortwave Modernization Coalition thinks the 2-25 MHz band is underused and wants to use it for the long-distance transmission of time-sensitive data from fixed stations. The users would be companies working with certain kinds of financial transactions; the proposal would prohibit voice transmission and mobile operations.
The firms in the coalition are market makers and liquidity providers for exchange-traded financial instruments. ... This high-frequency trading industry has in fact been using shortwave links for several years to send trading data between U.S. and foreign exchanges, but it has done so under experimental authorizations.
While the stations locations and frequencies are public data, the FCC has withheld key details of those operations from public disclosure, according to Bennett Kobb of Experimental Radio News, who follows this topic.
Experimental licenses are not intended for ongoing revenue operations. Now several major players in that industry (they are listed at the bottom of this story) coalesced into the SMC to petition for regular ongoing revenue operations under Part 90 of the FCC rules. ... Kobb said the petition marks the first major proceeding dealing with shortwave since the 1940s.
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