Red Sea Cable Damage Triggers Major Internet Outages: A Chokepoint in Global Connectivity

09-Sep-2025

In the era where the internet underpins everything from online shopping to stock trades, a seemingly invisible infrastructure failure can ripple across continents. One such thing happened on September 6, 2025, when multiple undersea fibre-optic cables in the Red Sea were severed near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, triggering buffering spikes and slowdowns that affected millions in Asia, the Middle East and more. Internet monitoring firm NetBlocks reported slow connectivity in countries in India, Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia, with users experiencing slow browsing, blurred and delayed video calls, and disrupted cloud services.

Tech giant Microsoft warned its users of elevated latency for its Azure cloud platform, especially for traffic routing through the Middle East, though the company swiftly rerouted data to mitigate the worst effects. This incident makes everyone think about how fragile our global internet system is and the Red Sea's outsized role as a digital nervous system for the Asia and Middle East internet systems.

The disruption began abruptly on Saturday when the two largest cable systems, SMW4 (South East Asia, Middle East, Western Europe), and IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe) started reporting failure of internet connection. A consortium led by Tata Communications operates SMW4, while Alcatel-Lucent has control of IMEWE; these cables are among the last major links in the underwater networks that carry about 95% of the international data traffic in the world. Furthermore, reports suggested that the damage was also affecting the FALCON Global Capacity eXchange (GCX) and reduction within the scale of the outage. The UAE saw slight speed reductions within Etisalat and Du networks. While buffering problems hit India on streaming and e-commerce platforms. Pakistani broadband providers, mostly dependent on these routes, suffered similar bottlenecks, with some businesses closing their shelves due to fickle connections.

Experts consider that interference with mundane maritime activities causes the cuts. "It's almost a commercial vessel dragging its anchor across the seabed," said John Wrottesley, secretary-general of the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) that deals with the protection of subsea infrastructure. These accidents make up about 30% of cable cuts occurring yearly worldwide – about 60 times each year. Most of them occur in shallower waters, such as those of the Red Sea, with the depth of some areas barely 200 metres. Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at cybersecurity firm Kentik, had also said that the situation corresponded with the locations of busy shipping lanes. Shortly thereafter, Houthi rebels from Yemen, who had been accused in similar incidents before amid their campaign against shipping linked to the Israel-Hamas war, denied any involvement through their al-Masirah news channel. The denial came in stark contrast to a similar cable cut back in February 2024, when the damage to three cables could have been caused by a ship dragged by Houthi debris.

Although accidents may be at the ripples of causes for sinking and grounding, geopolitics make the Red Sea an even riskier theatre. Since November 2023, the Houthis have mounted over 100 missile and drone strikes against commercial vessels, sinking four ships and killing at least 12 mariners. Acting in solidarity with the Palestinians, these attacks forced several shipping companies to take round-the-horn voyages around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, as long as they had  extra time and extra cost. The direct threat to subsea cables is minimal, but they poorly pose danger: a vessel in distress could become a hazard to the lines, and the rebel presence greatly hampers repairs, which require specialised vessels and crews to perform fibre splicing at depths approaching several thousand metres. The ICPC claims that depending on access permission from the parties in the conflict zone, full restoration may take weeks to months.

Why is this corridor so indispensable for Asia and the Middle East?

Geographically, it's the shortest, most efficient path for data flowing between booming tech hubs in Mumbai and Singapore to data centres in London and Frankfurt. Over 90% of Europe-Asia internet capacity traverses Red Sea cables, according to TeleGeography, a leading analyst of subsea networks. For Middle Eastern nations like Saudi Arabia and the UAE – home to financial powerhouses in Dubai and Riyadh – these lines connect oil trades, banking apps, and smart city initiatives to global markets. In Asia, India alone relies on undersea cables for 95% of its international bandwidth, with Mumbai serving as a primary landing station for SMW4 and IMEWE. Pakistan's digital economy, including remittances and e-governance, funnels through similar routes. East African countries like Kenya and Egypt, often overlooked, depend on these cables for over half their bandwidth to Europe, powering everything from mobile money transfers to remote education.

Quantitatively speaking, these stakes are heavy. It is estimated about 17% of the world's total internet traffic passes through the Red Sea, and with cloud computing, 5G, and AI service delivery booming at an unprecendented rate, the figures continue to escalate. SMW4, stretching for 13,900 kilometres from Singapore to Marseille through India and the Middle East, carries several terabits per second of data: voice calls, video streaming, and enterprise VPNs. IMEWE, 12,000 kilometres long, connecting Mumbai to France, provides additional paths, although it introduces more vulnerability when they both fail simultaneously. If disrupted, Netflix might slow, but an even more serious consequence would be the halt of algorithmic trading on the Bombay Stock Exchange or Telemed in rural Pakistan.

This isn't the first wake-up call. The 2024 cuts exposed similar frailties, forcing providers like Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio in India to lean on satellite backups and alternative land-sea routes, albeit at higher cost and latencies. Globally, cable owners-private consortia including telecom giants like Orange, Vodafone, and China's Huawei Marine-must navigate permitting hurdles in Yemen's war-torn waters. Yet, redundancy is improving. The Indian government is accelerating new cables like India-Asia-Express (IAX) and India-Europe-Express (IEX), which bypass the Red Sea by hugging Africas's west coast or arcing through the Pacific. Meta's 2Africa Pearl project, looping around the continent, aims to add 180 terabits of capacity by 2026. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia's NEOM initiative includes plans for diversified landing stations.

Red Sea Cable Damage