Internet disruptions hit Middle East, South Asia after Red sea cable cuts
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New Delhi: A series of undersea cable outages in the Red Sea has disrupted internet connectivity across multiple countries, including those in South Asia.
Global internet monitoring entity NetBlocks reported that India is among the affected nations. However, Indian telecom operators stated that they have not yet observed any significant impact on internet or data services, citing network redundancies and fallback routes supported by multiple undersea cables.
The affected infrastructure includes the South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 (SMW4) cable, operated by a consortium of telecom companies, including Tata Communications. An official statement from Tata Communications has not been issued, and emails sent to the company remained unanswered.
The cause of the outage is not immediately clear, though some reports have pointed to concerns related to Yemen's Houthi rebels’ activities in the Red Sea.
NetBlocks, in a post on X, confirmed: “A series of subsea cable outages in the Red Sea has degraded internet connectivity in multiple countries including #Pakistan and #India; the incident is attributed to failures affecting the SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.”
Microsoft also issued a status update for Azure users, warning of increased network latency on routes passing through the Middle East. The company stated: “Starting at 05:45 UTC on 06 September 2025, network traffic traversing through the Middle East may experience increased latency due to undersea fiber cuts in the Red Sea. Network traffic is not interrupted as Microsoft has rerouted traffic through alternate network paths.” Microsoft added that traffic not routed through the Middle East remains unaffected and promised to provide updates if conditions change.
Undersea cable outages can severely impact global connectivity by interrupting vital data flows. Repairs are often complex and time-consuming. Such outages typically occur due to accidental damage from ship anchors, natural disasters, sabotage, or conflicts.
With PTI inputs
