Its not new news that exchanges are increasingly touting the low latency of their infrastructure as a reason to trade with them. This article has a few good stats as to what low latency actually is:
Kevin McPartland, senior analyst at financial markets research firm Tabb Group, said: “Top US equity exchanges are matching orders in sub-200 microseconds,” that is, 200 millionths of a second.
He added: “It takes less than 100 microseconds for a co-located server, a machine in the same building as the exchange’s equipment, to get an order to a matching engine, software that matches bids and offers to make a trade.