- Incidents on the SMW4 and IMEWE cables near Jeddah degrade connectivity in India, Pakistan, and the UAE.
- Microsoft warns of increased latency in Azure and redirects traffic through alternative routes.
- Operators such as Tata Communications and consortia led by ASN did not comment.
- The cause is uncertain; repairs could take weeks, and infrastructure remains under pressure.
Others cable cuts fiber optic in the Red Sea have caused slowdowns and connectivity problems in different countries in Asia and the Middle East, according to multiple technical sources, with a cause not clarified for the moment.
Microsoft warned from its status page that customers of Azure might notice higher latency and minor interruptions, while the monitoring organization NetBlocks pointed out incidents in the systems SMW4 and IMEWE near Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), with significant effects on India, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.
What happened and which networks are affected
According to providers and network observatories, almost simultaneous failures were recorded in several key submarine routes, including those connecting Asia with the Middle East and Europe. In parallel, a cable outage was reported in Kuwait. FALCON (GCX), which also generated local incidents.
Pakistan Telecommunications Company (PTCL) confirmed cuts of nearly Jeddah, while Saudi authorities have not publicly acknowledged the incident. In the UAE, users of state-run networks Du and Etisalat They complained of a notable loss of speed and latency, without official statements detailing the scope.
The Southeast Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 (SMW4) system is operated by Tata Communications, and the India–Middle East–Western Europe (IMEWE) cable is under a consortium overseen by Alcatel Submarine Networks; in both cases, no immediate comment was offered.
Microsoft reported that some of the traffic has been redirected by alternative routes to alleviate the impact and that traffic that does not cross the Middle East “is not affected”, a common strategy in this type of event to maintain availability.
Although mitigation reduces the most visible outages, users may still experience higher latencies to the usual peak hours until the damaged routes recover their full capacity.
Impact on connectivity and the cloud
NetBlocks data showed significant performance drops: in the India, the speed fell to around 59% during the peak of the incident, while in Pakistan the deterioration was around 10%, with complaints of slowness also in the Emirates.
On the cloud, Azure recorded higher latency and small connection errors on services that route through the Middle East, although some of the impact was mitigated by reroute traffic to other corridors. Traffic outside that region, according to the company, remained stable.
It is worth remembering that submarine cables support around 99% of international traffic Data networks. Along with terrestrial and satellite links, they are the backbone of the Internet, so any loss in capacity is immediately noticeable in the user experience.
Network operators usually have redundancies and alternative routes to overcome incidents. However, the diversion of large volumes through less optimal roads adds congestion and explains the slowdowns of these days.
Possible causes and repair times
The origin of the damage continues undeterminedIn most incidents of this type, the most common causes are accidental, such as anchors or fishing gear that skims the seabed; nevertheless, geopolitical tension in the Red Sea has fueled suspicions of possible sabotage.
In recent months, the movement Houthi Yemen has been cited in several official alerts as a potential threat to underwater infrastructure, although its spokesmen have denied attack cables. Media outlets linked to the group acknowledged the recent outages, citing NetBlocks data, without claiming responsibility.
This year has already left several precedents damaged cables in the area, which reinforced surveillance and contingency plans by operators and governments in a critical corridor for data exchange between Asia, Africa and Europe.
When a break is confirmed, the repair process requires mobilizing a cable ship, precisely locate the affected point, lift the damaged section, join it and put it back in the deposit; it is specialized work that can take a long time for weeks depending on the weather and depth.
According to the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC), each year are recorded in the order of 150 to 200 failures in submarine cables worldwide, most of them due to unintentional causes. This context helps to weigh hypotheses while the investigation progresses.
For now, everything points to a scenario in which several Red Sea routes have lost capacity near Jeddah, particularly affecting India, Pakistan and the UAE, while Microsoft and network operators are maintaining service with rerouting and optimizations. It is to be expected high latencies punctually until the repair is completed and any doubts about the origin of the incident are cleared up.