Undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea have disrupted Internet access, primarily affecting Asia and the Middle East. Undersea cables are one of the backbones of the Internet, along with satellite connections and land-based cables. Typically, Internet service providers have multiple access points and reroute traffic if one fails, though it can slow down access for users.
While the immediate cause is yet to be ascertained, Microsoft reported some service issues to its Azure service due to the severance of multiple international subsea cables in the Red Sea.
Azure users are experiencing “increased latency” for traffic moving between Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. While the company stated that general network traffic not passing through the affected region was not impacted, it acknowledged that the cuts had caused “degraded service” for cross-regional traffic.
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service and one of the main competitors to Amazon Web Services (AWS), with around 722 million users worldwide, according to the Azure Active Directory as of May 2025. Azure functionally shares a lot of features with Google Cloud, which is the second-most used cloud-based service.
Launched in 2010, Azure has made rapid gains on its competitors, though, thanks to the already healthy user base of general Microsoft products. Azure is available in over 60 regions globally, with more planned as the service continues expanding.
NetBlocks, which monitors Internet access, said: “A series of subsea cable outages in the Red Sea has degraded Internet connectivity in multiple countries,” which it said included India and Pakistan. It blamed “failures affecting the SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.”
The specific cables affected were identified as the South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 (SMW4) and the India-Middle East-Western Europe (IMEWE) systems, both of which are critical for global internet traffic.
While the cause of the cuts has not been officially confirmed, the incident comes amid continued attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on ships in the Red Sea.
The Houthis have previously denied targeting subsea cables, but speculation has mounted about their possible involvement. CNBC reported that in the United Arab Emirates, home to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Internet users on the country’s state-owned Du and Etisalat networks complained of slower Internet speeds. The government did not immediately acknowledge the disruption.
Subsea cables can be cut by anchors dropped from ships, but can also be targeted in attacks. It can take weeks for repairs to be made to a ship, and the crew must locate themselves over the damaged cable.
Recall that recently a new report warned that the global Internet infrastructure – submarine communication cables – is dangerously vulnerable to both natural disasters and deliberate sabotage, posing systemic risks to international communication, commerce and security.
In a published paper by Dean of Reichman University’s School of Sustainability, Dr Asaf Tzachor, said the world’s overreliance on a uniform submarine cable network is a textbook case of a progress trap, stressing that while cables have enabled a connected planet, they also represent a fragile chokepoint in global communications.”
Published in Nature Electronics, the study detailed the growing vulnerability of submarine cables, which transmit over 95 per cent of the world’s international data, to both natural and man-made hazards.
