Johannesburg – The JSE on Thursday said that multiple transmission failures across the MTN network (MTN) prompted a halt of the cash equities market on July 27 2010.
   
The JSE stopped receiving multi-cast public trading data through the exchange's international network links, which are managed by MTN Group [JSE:MTN] just after 09:00 on July 27.    
   
"This caused the JSE to halt trading in the cash equities market. The JSE worked with MTN Business throughout the period during which the market was halted to diagnose the problem and restore the flow of public trading data to clients. The cash equities market moved to an opening auction at 15:05 and continuous trading began at 15:20," the group said.
   
It added that trading hours were extended by one hour and the market closed at 18:00.
   
"Almost 70 000 trades took place on the day," the JSE said.
   
MTN Business provides the JSE with a managed network service which consists of multiple international network links to the JSE and which include multiple levels of redundancy, both submarine and terrestrial.
   
The networks carry public and private trading data between the exchange and its equity trading engine hosted and managed in London by the London Stock Exchange, the JSE explained.
   
The group determined that on July 27, multiple transmission failures across the MTN network, combined with an inability to support multi-cast public trading data on a path in the network effectively at the fourth level of redundancy, caused the multi-cast public data not to reach the JSE with the result that trade could not take place in the JSE's cash equities market.
   
"MTN Business has taken remedial action to resolve the technical issue and will take further action in the following weeks based on its analysis of the cause, including an enhanced monitoring system," The group said.   
  
It added that although a network issue also caused the closure of the cash equities market for 90 minutes on July 12 2010, the JSE and MTN had not yet been able to determine the root cause of that incident.
   
"The findings of the independent experts appointed in this regard are awaited and will be communicated once the investigation has concluded," The JSE said.
   
"Although the nature of the network failure was extreme and left the JSE with no option but to halt the equities market, we sincerely regret halting the cash equities market at all," the group concluded.

- I-Net Bridge