FPL enters the ring

I completely agree with you Gary - that looking to FIX when developing the consolidated tape would be a good road for the financial industry to go down. It's an established standard that most of the industry (well, the sell-side anyway) already uses. 

However, I have heard from a few people (I'm a journalist, we hear things) that there are some on the sell-side that do not think going down the FIX route is the best option. FIX is ubiquitous on the sell-side; on the buy-side not so much. The tier one buy-side firms all rely on the XML-based FIX, but when you move down the food chain to the 'Mom & Pop' fund managers - FIX is harder to find. 

When developing a consolidated tape for Europe there are political issues (isn't there always?) It can not be seen as a London-based, large investment bank initiative - and an embrace of FIX looks that that to some people. (And that is not even going into what Swift may feel about Europe going whole hog down the FIX route for the CT.)

Those 'political' issues may out weigh any potential benefits of FIX. 

Arhhh politics! I agree this can stupify the best of plans. However FPL does appear the very best option if there is to be a quick and cheap solution. SWIFT is far to slow and cumbersom and has minimal buy side usage where FIX has penetrated into the buyside already and is an ongoing and growing use. The CT would further escalate FIX into the buyside community and this would obviously benefit the sell side banks

Its important that the industry takes charge of the CT and moves fast gaining as much industry wide support along the way.

Lets kick politics out of the industry     

If they implemented using AMQP (an Open Source web-native transactional middleware) for delivery, and offered under a Creative Commons license, they could make it available to anyone over the web.

FIX & FIXML as options for the data protocol would cover all the bases.

There would still be market for "premium" delivery via market data vendors, but a decent image on consolidate BBO would be available over the web to anyone, even retail.