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Interesting that the EU is starting to move towards a consolidated tape around the same time that many US traders have shifted away from the consolidated tape to direct exchange feeds.

On the plus side, the move in the US towards consuming direct exchange feeds has contributed to the growth of commercial off the shelf technology to aggregate and process exchange data.... i.e. once upon a time it was difficult and expensive to build a ticker plant, now you can buy them in (fast) boxes off the shelf. 

Yes, the iPhone gets synched to your computer and an image of your iPhone's database is stored on your computer.  So are copies of your calendar, your address book, etc..

So if your computer gets compromised, this information is available.

But if your computer gets compromised, ALL the data you store on it is available.

So the basic lesson is that you should secure your laptop/desktop machine properly.

But you already do that, right?

Agreed that predictable latency is as important as low latency.  Which is why the exchanges are now starting to talk about std deviation of latency or latency at the 80th/90th percentile and not just average latency. 

But what evidence is there of big banks building their own networks and feed handlers in-house?

As in market data and trading, the answer is "it depends".  What it depends on is your objective.

i.e. If you are running a stat arb fund and creating alpha from short-lived market innefficiencies, then you will trade in and out of a position many times during a day, so milliseconds matter, and a market data system that is 100 milliseconds behind is a BAD thing.  But suppose you have a long-term strategy based on (for example) investing in companies that are undervalued, undercovered, but where the secular trends in their market favor them and they have good management.  You may accumulate a position over many months and hold it for a year or longer.  Then milliseconds don't matter.

So too with blogs or any news source.  What are you trying to achieve?

If I am trading on news, then seconds matter.  For example, if I know that Apple is going to miss their quarterly numbers by a lot, and I know that before the rest of the world does, then I can trade on that.

But if I am trying to understand the long-term impact of Google's Android on Apple's iPhone revenues, then I am happy to wait days or weeks for a well thought out analysis of the market for mobile platforms.

"You only have to look at the US market, where the New York Stock Exchange and others eventually absorbed the threat of ECNs."

If you are looking for precedent, the US is a bad place to make the argument that MiFID is done and dusted!  Having lived through RegATS and RegNMS (which are not the same as MiFID I realize), I would only point out that:

 - The NYSE absorbed the threat of ECNs in part because pre-NMS they still had many regulatory protections, and by acquiring (or being acquired by) an ECN (ARCA).

- Even still the NYSE continues to hemorage trading volume to competitors.

And of course the "others" (NASDAQ) only survived by buying the ECNs (INET, BRUT...) after losing great chunks of market share.

Will this play out in Europe?  Too soon to say, the market structure (especially the role of CSDs) is different and more vertically tied than it is in the US, etc.  

But if I were a European exchange then the US experience would give me cold comfort!