I assume from the comment they mean from one exchange location to another, but even then it’s not true. Those routes are _overbuilt_ precisely because of HFT so getting on dark fiber for that is cheaper than other backhaul fiber.
I’ve been out of HFT for a long time but when I was in it you could get onto the state of the art microwave networks between Chicago and the east coast for ~25k a month, which isn’t cheap but also not the biggest expense an HFT firm would have.
Worse fiber is a terrible choice over what’s typically used in low latency trading (which is different than but related than high frequency) - typically microwave networks are used because you get good line of sight advantages and latencies are better. HRT, stryker, and others are heavily dependent on their microwave advantage.
Just to clarify this for people who don't know the EE details of this. Even direct point-to-point fiber suffers compared to microwave because of the velocity factor of the cables. What?! Inside a glass fiber, the speed of light is only about 70% the speed of light in free-space! Microwave in air, though, travels very very close to the free-space velocity of light.
I think some US firms may have dug tunnels beneath the Hudson river to be able to locate in Jersey City rather than Manhattan. That probably cost millions.
I've never worked in US financial markets, but that's def not true in many countries.
< 400 USD / month can set you a server + connection within a B3 datacenter (Brazil's largest and only exchange).