Transcontinental, cross-border colocation connectivity is becoming increasingly common as latency continues to decrease.

CME Group, which is planning on launching a new colocation facility in Aurora, Ill. in late January, has approved a new high-speed international connection to across the Pacific. It is at least the second such connection approved in recent months.

KVH, a provider of network technology, has established a new network point of presence at CME Group’s Aurora colocation facility. The connection is set to go live on Dec. 22 and will offer latency of about 128ms, which it asserts will be one of the fastest connections between Tokyo to Aurora available today.

“With high frequency trading pushing demand for low-latency networks, we expect the Tokyo to Chicago/Aurora route to increase transaction volume significantly,” said Richard Warley, president and chief executive officer of KVH.

NTT America, a unit of NTT Communications, in October announced it will be providing its Arcstar service for its colocation services at CME’s facility, which will provide users with low-latency trans-Pacific access to Asian markets. The company says that its Arcstar technology provides the fastest route between the U.S. and Japan over NTT Group-owned undersea cables. NTT America is a subsidiary of NTT Communications, which is the global data and services unit of NTT Group, a Japanese telecommunications company.

CME Group plans on launching its colocation services, which will include hosting, connectivity and support services, on Jan. 29, 2012. Exchanges worldwide are looking to increase the speed and lower the latency of their trading platforms, which most directly benefits high-frequency traders. Co-location facilities are located as close to their machine engine as possible, giving trading firms, including HFT firms, nearly instant execution times. HFT has grown to about 75 percent of trading volume in the U.S., according to industry estimates.

The service is expected to become a lucrative source of additional revenue for exchange operators, as they capitalize on the quest for speed sought by active, high-volume traders. CME Group has previously said that it expects to generate between $30 million and $40 million from co-location services when they launch next year. Its data center, located in the Western Chicago suburbs, has been purpose built for co-location use. It will provide equidistant cross connections to put all users on equal ground.