Subsea Cables Severed, Internet Disrupted In Asia And The Middle East

Internet access across large parts of Asia and the Middle East has been disrupted.

This is the result of two major undersea fibre-optic cables being severed in the Red Sea, forcing carriers and cloud providers to reroute traffic.

Microsoft confirmed that customers of its Azure cloud service were experiencing higher latency after the SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah were cut early Saturday morning.

The tech giant said repairs would take time, with engineers rebalancing and optimising traffic flows in the meantime.

The incident has affected users in India, Pakistan, the UAE, and other countries.

Pakistan Telecommunications warned subscribers to expect degraded service during peak hours while additional bandwidth is sourced.

NetBlocks, an internet monitoring group, said outages were continuing to cause “slow speeds and intermittent access” across multiple countries.

The cause of the damage remains unclear.

Houthi rebels in Yemen, previously accused of threatening maritime infrastructure, have denied targeting the cables.

Industry officials say repairs may take weeks, given regional instability and the need for specialised vessels to operate in contested waters.

Subsea cables carry about 95 per cent of intercontinental internet traffic, underpinning everything from streaming and banking to military transmissions.

Their high capacity makes them far more efficient than satellites. The drawback is that when cables are damaged, large numbers of users and businesses can be cut off or slowed down.

The outage underscores the fragility of a handful of fibre routes that carry much of the world’s data.

Analysts say the incident highlights the need for governments and corporations to diversify infrastructure and build in greater redundancy to limit the impact of future disruptions.

The SMW4 and IMEWE systems connect Europe, the Gulf and Asia and are not Australia’s primary subsea links. However, some Australian traffic does pass through these hubs.

Local carriers say no direct service interruptions have been reported, though users may still see indirect latency if international routes are congested.