Telehouse launches time-as-a-service offering

Author: Isha Jain

Telehouse has announced the launch of NPLTime Certified at Telehouse. The new time-as-a-service offering follows a partnership agreement with the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK’s National Metrology Institute.

NPLTime Certified at Telehouse provides accuracy and synchronisation to businesses that require a precise, resilient and certified time signal. Prior to this partnership, NPL had already been distributing its time services from the Telehouse London Docklands campus for several years.

As a result of the partnership, the new offering is being monitored and maintained 24/7 up to the point of network entry, therefore, making time directly traceable and certified to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) at the point of provision. It delivers time, accurate to within one microsecond of UTC, allowing its customers to have full confidence in data timing with certifiable accuracy.

Unlike more traditional methods, NPLTime Certified at Telehouse eliminates the need to rely on public internet or GPS antennas for time synchronisation. To take advantage of the new service, customers can connect their rack directly to the new service feed through a fibre cable to accept the time signal. This makes it much more secure and resilient, with fibre optic links eliminating vulnerabilities to Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) such as jamming and spoofing.

The new capability benefits organisations in all industries but, in particular, the financial services sector, which has been legally required to comply with stringent EU regulations for time stamping on financial trades and transactions known as Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) RTS 25, since January 2018. 

Gaming, content, and broadcast media businesses can also benefit from the latest offering, allowing better synchronisation of audio and video feeds to minimise errors, such as lip-sync delays, ultimately providing optimum experiences. In addition, Telehouse IT and cyber security customers will now be able to use accurate time stamping insight to help strengthen their security infrastructure.

Takayo Takamuro, Managing Director, Telehouse Europe, says, “As the technological and regulatory landscapes evolve, accurate time is increasingly business-critical, particularly for financial services organisations that must provide evidence of accuracy for forensic analysis and audits. The launch of NPLTime Certified at Telehouse further strengthens our commitment to customers to deliver services that directly address their challenges, in this case, certifiable and traceable time to aid regulatory compliance.”

Historically, Network Time Protocol (NTP) was the most popular source of accurate time for data centre providers like Telehouse, however, it presented customers with several limitations, including traceability and accuracy of only 10 milliseconds. With NPLTime Certified at Telehouse, there are none of the vulnerabilities inevitable with GNSS-derived signals, as it provides a direct link to NPL and the UK time standard.