Hams Fear Threat From High Powered Shortwave Transmitters

High-frequency trading transmitters are near New York and Chicago.
Locations near Seattle boost transmissions to Asia

Ham radio operators are sounding the alarm over the latest threat to their beloved hobby—and this time, it is coming from Wall Street.

The Wall Street Journal reports a group of high-frequency trading firms is asking the Federal Communications Commission to open shortwave frequencies to greater commercial use, so they can use radio to zip financial data around the world in milliseconds.

Prominent members of the amateur-radio community say interference from traders’ broadcasts could ruin their hobby, which often involves tuning in to weak radio signals so they can chat with fellow hams in faraway places. Hundreds of hams have filed letters with the FCC opposing the traders’ proposal, and some have railed against the plan in YouTube videos.

Brock Fansler is among those speaking out. A 40-year-old Los Angeles resident with shoulder-length hair, he likes using his radio to send digital data about weather conditions to other hams. He complains that the traders are looking to transmit with up to 20,000 watts of power, whereas amateurs are capped at 1,500 watts, and many use off-the-shelf radios with 100 watts.

Increased interference could render
ham radio equipment useless

“They’re asking for an insane amount of power,” Fansler said. “It’s like having neighbors move in with a drum set and guitar. This is going to be blasted all over the planet, with how much wattage they’re going to put behind it.”

The group behind the proposal, called the Shortwave Modernization Coalition, says such fears are overblown. The coalition—whose members include such trading giants as Jump Trading Group, DRW Holdings and Virtu Financial—says it has already been using shortwave for several years and there haven’t been any verified complaints of interference.

Shortwave is useful when HFT firms need to send rapid updates about price moves across oceans—for instance, from U.S. futures markets in Chicago to European futures markets in Frankfurt. The usual way to send data from one continent to another is undersea fiber-optic cable. But light moves more slowly through glass cables than through air, so it is faster to use radio—specifically, in shortwave frequencies. That allows waves to bounce up and down off the ionosphere, an upper layer of the atmosphere, allowing them to propagate around the globe. 

Sending data from Chicago to Frankfurt is nine milliseconds quicker by shortwave than by undersea cable, according to data from Deutsche Börse. That is less time than it takes for a hummingbird to flap its wings.

If the FCC approves the traders’ petition, Ham operators fear it will lead to further encroachment by private firms into bands of the radio spectrum used by amateurs.