Several countries in the Middle East and parts of Asia on Sunday witnessed internet disruption after reports of undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea. Pakistan was among the countries affected. The exact cause of the disruption is not known yet. Houthi rebels of Yemen have several times threatened that they will target the cables to pressure Israel and end its war in Gaza. However, Houthi rebels have denied any involvement in damaging the undersea internet cables in the past.
Microsoft Services Affected By Undersea Cable Cuts
Technology giant Microsoft confirmed that its services were affected by the cable damage.
The company said the Middle East “may experience increased latency due to undersea fibre cuts in the Red Sea.” It also clarified that internet traffic not passing through the Middle East “is not impacted,” though it did not provide further details.
In a later update, Microsoft warned that Azure users could face higher latency, particularly for traffic moving between Asia and Europe.
“Undersea fibre cuts can take time to repair; as such, we will continuously monitor, rebalance, and optimise routing to reduce customer impact in the meantime,” the company stated, promising daily updates.
NetBlocks Confirms Internet Disruption
Internet monitoring group NetBlocks confirmed “a series of subsea cable outages in the Red Sea has degraded internet connectivity in multiple countries,” including Pakistan.
The internet watchdog claimed that the damage to SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, led to the disruptions. No official response has been released by Riyadh yet.
Disruptions were also reported in the UAE, with users complaining of slower connections on state-owned telecom networks Du and Etisalat. The government has not made any statement regarding the slowdown.
Global Internet Traffic Slowed
The damage to cables has slowed the global internet traffic and disrupted Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. It has been reported that users may continue to experience slow speeds and delays. Rerouting, however, has helped to ease the effect.
Zubair Amin is a Senior Journalist at NewsX with over seven years of experience in reporting and editorial work. He has written for leading national and international publications, including Foreign Policy Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Economic Times, The Indian Express, The Wire, Article 14, Mongabay, News9, among others. His primary focus is on international affairs, with a strong interest in US politics and policy. He also writes on West Asia, Indian polity, and constitutional issues. Zubair tweets at zubaiyr.amin
