Connecting New York and Chicago

One of the major themes in history over the last 500 years has been the increasing interconnection of the world. What has driven this? One thing certainly has been capitalism. This story describes how last year, Spread Networks, opened up a special fiber optic line connecting trading centers in New York and Chicago. There are already links between New York and Chicago, but what made this link special was that it was designed to follow the absolute shortest route between New York and Chicago. It was 100 miles shorter than the previous route. Why was this important? Because signals traveling on this route at the speed of light take 3 milliseconds less to get between New York and Chicago than signals traveling on the previous fiber optic cable. Why is this important? Because traders trying to take advantage of transient price differences between the New York and Chicago stock/commodity markets will be able to use this line to beat traders using conventional lines. While the investors didn't say how much they paid to build the line, some estimates were that it cost $300 million. In 1830 it took roughly three weeks to get a message from New York to Chicago. Now we are at a point where it takes 13.3 milliseconds to get a message from New York to Chicago and some people see an advantage of 3 milliseconds as a huge competitive advantage.