How About a Data-Buyers' Club or Cooperative?

[Carroll Slemaker <cslemaker1@xxxxxxxx>]

Has anyone ever considered forming a cooperative for the purpose of
negotiating a better data-subscription deal with data vendors?

I've seen remarks on this list that the participants number over a
thousand.  I suspect that at least half that number subscribe to
real-time data.  If 400 or so prospective subscribers could, as a group,
put out a request-for-bid to the several data vendors, that would carry,
I would think, considerable clout.

My MAIN objective in this would be quality of service;  price would be
secondary.  As several of us have noted recently, DBC provides
ABSOLUTELY NO guarantees whatsoever of what their service will deliver. 
(I don't know, but I suspect that the same is true for other vendors as
well.)  A group request-for-bid, on the other hand, could require each
responding vendor to specify not only a price, but also the MINIMUM
service quality which they felt they could guarantee, where "service
quality" means completeness, timeliness, and accuracy of the delivered
data.  Keep in mind that this would NOT be the average EXPECTED quality,
but rather the MINIMUM;  if service fell below this minimum in any
month, some penalty in the form of a partial rebate would be required by
contract.

I would not suggest that WE specify the minimum acceptable to us, but,
rather, require the vendor to tell us what they feel they can deliver. 
Completeness would be measured as a percentage of the price updates
transmitted by an exchange which made it as far as the final
transmission leg to a subscriber.  Timeliness would be measured by both
the magnitude of delay and the number of ticks affected by the delay. 
(Both of these concepts would need to be expanded and refined if we got
serious about the whole idea.  We would need to pay particular attention
to exactly how compliance would be determined/measured.)

In addition to hearing comments from list participants in general, I
would also much appreciate comment from those list participants who are
in the legal profession - are there any legal problems with such an
idea?  What would be required to put this idea into effect?

Carroll Slemaker