The routes are available from London, Frankfurt, Madrid, New York City and Chicago. The routes further deepen Level 3's commitment to the financial services industry and provide financial exchanges and trading venues with access to all six major European financial centres as well as key U.S. centres over Level 3's international network.

With the low-latency routes, customers connecting to financial centres in Milan and Zurich have the ability to access high-speed transport rates with low transmission delays - essential functions for high-frequency trading. In addition to the routes to Milan and Zurich, Level 3's low-latency network footprint offers connectivity to all of the following financial business centres: Chicago, Washington, D.C., New York City, London, Frankfurt, and Madrid.

"In today's financial services market, particularly in high-frequency trading, the goal is to have the fastest connection to the most important financial hubs, so choosing the right network partner for that connectivity is critical," said James Heard, president of European Markets. "Not only are we regularly upgrading our network to consistently offer the fastest routes, we have the network reach to give our customers access to more of the world's financial centers from a single provider."

As high-frequency trading increases and significant amounts of capital are exchanged in fractions of a second, the connectivity that enables those trades becomes that much more important. In 2010, financial markets research and strategic advisory firm TABB Group estimated high-frequency traders accounted for approximately 56 percent of total equity trading in the U.S. and 38 percent in Europe.

Level 3's European financial services portfolio includes nine total low-latency route options, and is specifically designed to meet the needs of the most demanding financial services customers - including the growing high-frequency trading market. Level 3's extensive network footprint provides access to four of the top five financial exchanges.

Because Level 3 controls and operates its own network, the company is uniquely able to manage the delivery process from end-to-end and optimize it each step of the way. Transactions on the routes are further backed by network redundancy and stringent service level agreements (SLAs), guaranteeing performance on the Level 3 network.