A superfast internet link between France and England will be built across the English channel, boosting high-speed financial trading between Paris and London after Brexit.

Equinix, the American data centre giant, is working with an Irish cable company to create the first subsea cable across the channel for two decades.

The 300-mile connection, described as the data equivalent of the Channel Tunnel, will cut connection times by 14pc and help to deal with the explosion of internet traffic anticipated over the coming years.

It will link an Equinix data centre in Paris and the company’s facility in Slough, which is Britain’s biggest high-frequency trading hub.

Growing demand for high-speed connections around the world has led internet companies to invest heavily in undersea cables that can transfer huge quantities of data in milliseconds. Internet-connected machinery and cars will increasingly rely on fast connections between data centres, where racks of powerful computer servers process information.