The upgrade significantly improves latency on this route as well as the Frankfurt-to-New York and Frankfurt-to-Chicago routes, enabling higher-speed transaction rates with very low transmission delays for financial exchanges and other trading venues.

"Latency remains a highly-sensitive issue in the financial industry, and Level 3's improvement of its Frankfurt to London ultra-low-latency route (and the subsequent benefit to its other routes as a result) positions the company well in this area, particularly among international enterprise and financial service providers," said Roopashree Honnachari, senior industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan. "Combined with the company's latency guarantees and network scalability, this offering could be a real competitive differentiator for Level 3."

Effective today, Level 3 will offer customers two grades of performance for ultra-low-latency routes, with access to circuit speeds of up to 10 Gigabits per second.

These two grades, Premier and Advanced, will allow customers to choose between two latency route speeds based on their specific requirements. Premier customers will have access to the faster ultra-low-latency route. Both of these levels are then backed by Level 3's latency service level agreement (SLA).

"Similar to our ultra-low-latency route from New York to Chicago, this upgrade demonstrates Level 3's commitment to supporting our financial services customers, especially as ultra-low-latency and transaction cycle times are critical to this sector," said James Heard, president of European Markets at Level 3. "It also reinforces our commitment to continually enhance our ultra-low-latency service offering which, when combined with our network scale and reliability, deepens our commitment to the financial services community."

The Level 3 network today spans 22 countries, with services offered in approximately 190 markets in Europe and North America. The company operates approximately 54,000 long-haul fiber miles and 27,000 metro fiber miles, making it one of the most extensive and diverse network footprints in the market.

Leveraging this footprint, Level 3 offers multiple low-latency options for any given route and a direct connection to low latency, trans-Atlantic routes with diverse landing stations to better enable network security and business continuity.