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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 18 / Friday, January 29, 2021 / Notices The Exchange also believes that the connectivity fees are equitably allocated amongst users of the network connectivity alternatives, when these fees are viewed in the context of the overall trading volume on the Exchange.
To illustrate, the purchasers of the 10Gb ULL connectivity account for approximately 94% of the volume on the Exchange for the month of November 2020. This overall volume percentage 94% of total Exchange volume is in line with the amount of network connectivity revenue collected from 10Gb ULL purchasers 98% of total Exchange connectivity revenue. For example, utilizing the same recently completed billing cycle described above, Exchange Members and nonMembers that purchased 10Gb ULL
connections accounted for approximately 87% of the total network connectivity revenue collected by the Exchange from all connectivity alternatives; and Members and nonMembers that purchased 1Gb and 10Gb connections accounted for approximately 13% of the revenue collected by the Exchange from all connectivity alternatives.
The Exchange further believes that the fees are equitably allocated, as the amount of the fees for the various connectivity alternatives are directly related to the actual costs associated with providing the respective connectivity alternatives. That is, the cost to the Exchange of providing a 1Gb network connection is significantly lower than the cost to the Exchange of providing a 10Gb or 10Gb ULL network connection. Pursuant to its extensive cost review described above, the Exchange believes that the average cost to provide a 10Gb ULL network connection is approximately 8 times more than the average cost to provide a 1Gb connection. The simple hardware and software component costs alone of a 10Gb ULL connection is not 8 times more than the 1Gb connection. Rather, it is the associated premium-product level network monitoring, reporting, and support services costs that accompany a 10Gb ULL connection which causes it to be 8 times more costly to provide than the 1Gb connection. Accordingly, the Exchange believes it is equitable to allocate those network infrastructure costs that accompany a 10Gb ULL connection to the purchasers of those connections, and not to purchasers of 1Gb connections.
As discussed above, the Exchange differentiates itself by offering a premium-product network experience, as an operator of a high performance, ultra-low latency network
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with unparalleled system throughput, which network can support access to three distinct options markets and multiple competing market-makers having affirmative obligations to continuously quote over 750,000
distinct trading products per exchange, and the capacity to handle approximately 10.7 million quote messages per second. The premiumproduct network experience enables users of 10Gb and 10Gb ULL
connections to receive the network monitoring and reporting services for those approximately 750,000 distinct trading products. There is a significant, quantifiable amount of research and development R&D effort, employee compensation and benefits expense, and other expense associated with providing the high touch network monitoring and reporting services that are utilized by the 10Gb and 10Gb ULL connections offered by the Exchange. These value add services are fully-discussed herein, and the actual costs associated with providing these services are the basis for the differentiated amount of the fees for the various connectivity alternatives.
In order to provide more detail and to quantify the Exchanges costs associated with providing access to the Exchange in general, the Exchange notes that there are material costs associated with providing the infrastructure and headcount to fully-support access to the Exchange. The Exchange incurs technology expense related to establishing and maintaining Information Security services, enhanced network monitoring and customer reporting, as well as Regulation SCI
mandated processes, associated with its network technology. While some of the expense is fixed, much of the expense is not fixed, and thus increases as the services associated with the Proposed Access Fees increase. For example, new 10Gb ULL connections require the purchase of additional hardware to support those connections as well as enhanced monitoring and reporting of customer performance that MIAX
PEARL and its affiliates provide.
Further, as the total number of all connections increase, MIAX PEARL and its affiliates need to increase their data center footprint and consume more power, resulting in increased costs charged by their third-party data center provider. Accordingly, the cost to MIAX
PEARL and its affiliates is not fixed. The Exchange believes the Proposed Access Fees are reasonable in order to offset the costs to the Exchange associated with providing access to its network infrastructure.
Further, because the costs of operating its own data center are significant and
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not economically feasible for the Exchange at this time, the Exchange does not operate its own data centers, and instead contracts with a third-party data center provider. The Exchange notes that other competing exchange operators own/operate their data centers, which offers them greater control over their data center costs.
Because those exchanges own and operate their data centers as profit centers, the Exchange is subject to additional costs. The Proposed Access Fees, which are charged for accessing the Exchanges data center network infrastructure, are directly related to the network and offset such costs.
The Exchange invests significant resources in network R&D to improve the overall performance and stability of its network. For example, the Exchange has a number of network monitoring tools some of which were developed inhouse, and some of which are licensed from third-parties, that continually monitor, detect, and report network performance, many of which serve as significant value-adds to the Exchanges Members and enable the Exchange to provide a high level of customer service.
These tools detect and report performance issues, and thus enable the Exchange to proactively notify a Member and the SIPs when the Exchange detects a problem with a Members connectivity. In fact, the Exchange often receives inquiries from other industry participants regarding the status of networking issues outside of the Exchanges own network environment that are impacting the industry as a whole via the SIPs, including inquiries from regulators, because the Exchange has a superior, state-of the-art network that, through its enhanced monitoring and reporting solutions, often detects and identifies industry-wide networking issues ahead of the SIPs. The Exchange also incurs costs associated with the maintenance and improvement of existing tools and the development of new tools.
Additionally, certain Exchangedeveloped network aggregation and monitoring tools provide the Exchange with the ability to measure network traffic with a much more granular level of variability. This is important as Exchange Members demand a higher level of network determinism and the ability to measure variability in terms of single digit nanoseconds. Also, routine R&D projects to improve the performance of the networks hardware infrastructure result in additional cost.
In sum, the costs associated with maintaining and enhancing a state-ofthe-art exchange network in the U.S.
options industry is a significant expense
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