[Hong Kong, January 27, 2021] Telstra, a leading global telecommunications and technology company, has announced the launch of the Telstra Octagon, a global financial trading solution that provides organisations with low latency connectivity directly into eight of the world’s most valuable futures and commodities marketplaces.

Designed for multi assets, equities, fixed income, commodities, money markets, forex, futures, and derivatives trading, the Telstra Octagon platform gives organisations the ability to trade faster across key exchanges. Using the Telstra Octagon, organisations can leverage direct connections to access trading floors in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific region, including the CME and ICE exchanges in the U.S. as well Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. The state-of-the-art connectivity can help companies speed price discovery, risk analysis, smart order routing, flow and matching, trade execution and settlement.

The platform provides increased control over trading performance thanks to Telstra’s APAC subsea cable networks. Telstra owns and operates the largest subsea cable system in APAC, including the fastest cable paths between Hong Kong and Singapore, Taiwan and Korea on fully owned Telstra cable systems.

“Telstra offers the fastest routes to most exchanges in Asia. We are continuously investing in new low latency cable paths and on optimising backhaul routes, with a focus on lowering latency into the Korea and Taiwan exchanges in 2021,” said Paul Abfalter, Head of North Asia and Global Wholesale.

Priority end-to-end access to the networks enables financial and trading organisations to respond to market-moving events as they happen and execute investment strategies across Asian, Australian and U.S. capital markets. Additional benefits include Telstra’s network redundancy, resilience and market access.

Deep technology experience and local support staff throughout Asia enables Telstra to quickly implement a pre-built, yet highly adaptable trading platform that can be specifically customised for each organisation.

“The Telstra Octagon was designed to enable global financial trading firms to thrive in the hyper-competitive trading world of today where the difference between success and failure is measured in milliseconds,” Paul continued.

About Telstra

Telstra is a leading telecommunications and technology company with a proudly Australian heritage and a longstanding, growing international business.

Today, we operate in over 20 countries outside of Australia, providing services to thousands of business, government, carrier and OTT customers. Telstra Enterprise is a division of Telstra that provides data and IP networks and network application services, such as managed networks, unified communications, cloud, industry solutions and integrated services. Telstra Purple, our new professional and managed services business in Australia, Asia and the UK, brings together people and innovative solutions to define and deliver a clear vision of our customer's transformation journey, network foundation, and the protection they need to thrive.

These services are underpinned by our subsea cable network, one of the largest in the Asia Pacific region, with licenses in Asia, Europe and the Americas, and access to more than 2,000 Points-of-Presence around the world.