"With these changes the fastest players were now able to make money simply because they were the fastest traders." Directly contradicts "speed is not a problem

"With these changes the fastest players were now able to make money simply because they were the fastest traders." Directly contradicts "speed is not a problem". Speed directly translates into being able to "front of trades from slower market participants". If they did not have the speed, they could not algorithmically predict the actions of (or react to activity on one exchange before it reaches other exchanges) and jump in front of slower participants. There's other issues on top of this, such as paying for early or privileged access. But, if you are faster, you can successfully arbitrage across time or distance(really same thing as time)