A series of undersea cable outages in the Red Sea has disrupted internet connectivity across parts of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, including India and Pakistan this weekend. The disruption, attributed to failures in the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SMW4) and India-Middle East-Western Europe (IMEWE) cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, has caused increased latency and slower speeds, particularly affecting Microsoft Azure services for traffic traversing the Middle East While.
The SMW4 cable, operated by Tata Communications, and the IMEWE cable, managed by an Alcatel-Lucent consortium, are the primary systems affected by the outages.
Network monitoring group NetBlocks confirmed the degradation of internet connectivity in multiple countries, specifically naming India, Pakistan, and the UAE, with users on state-owned Du and Etisalat networks in the UAE reporting slower speeds.
Microsoft confirmed initial service disruptions and higher latency, noting that while traffic not passing through the Middle East was unaffected, users experienced higher latency on routes through the region.
"We do expect higher latency on some traffic that previously traversed through the Middle East. Network traffic that does not traverse through the Middle East is not impacted," Microsoft said.
The company later reported that Azure services have been restored through rerouting traffic via alternate network paths, with all services now operational.
Azure is the world's second largest cloud provider after Amazon's AWS, which has also rerouted traffic through alternative network paths and network traffic is not interrupted.
The cause of the cable cuts remains unclear, though the incident occurs amid heightened tensions in the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Houthi rebels have been targeting commercial shipping since late 2023. The Houthis acknowledged the cable cuts via their al-Masirah TV channel but did not claim responsibility.
Subsea cable repairs typically take weeks and require specialized vessels and crews, making the situation a prolonged challenge for network providers.
The Red Sea is a critical telecommunications corridor linking Europe, Africa, and Asia, and such disruptions can significantly impact global digital infrastructure.
This incident also highlights the important part satellite internet services like SpaceX Starlink, could play in the future of global internet infrastructure.
Repairing subsea cable damage is a complex process that can take weeks, requiring specialized ships and crews to locate and fix the severed lines.