Undersea fiber cables in the Red Sea were cut, degrading internet access in parts of the Middle East and South Asia, monitoring groups and service providers said Sunday, though the cause of the damage was not immediately established.
NetBlocks, which monitors internet access worldwide, reported a series of subsea cable outages in the Red Sea that it said had degraded connectivity in multiple countries, including India and Pakistan. Microsoft posted on its status site that the Middle East "may experience increased latency due to undersea fiber cuts in the Red Sea," noting that internet traffic not routed through the Middle East was not affected immediately.
NetBlocks said the failures affected the SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. SMW4, the South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 cable, is operated by Tata Communications; IMEWE, the India–Middle East–Western Europe system, is managed by a consortium that uses Alcatel Submarine Networks equipment. Neither Tata Communications nor Alcatel responded to requests for comment.
Pakistan Telecommunications Co. Ltd. acknowledged cuts on Saturday, saying the damage had impacted connections. Kuwaiti authorities reported that the FALCON GCX cable running through the Red Sea had been cut and that the disruption affected internet services in the small, oil-rich Gulf state; GCX did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the United Arab Emirates, customers of state-owned Du and Etisalat reported slower speeds. Saudi authorities did not acknowledge the disruption and did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Undersea cables form a backbone of global internet traffic alongside satellite and terrestrial links. Network operators typically provision multiple routes so traffic can be rerouted when a line fails, but rerouting can increase latency and reduce capacity for users in affected regions. Repairing a damaged undersea cable usually requires a specialized vessel and crew to locate and bring the cable to the surface for splicing, a process that can take days to weeks depending on conditions and availability of repair ships.
Cables can be damaged accidentally by ship anchors and fishing gear, but they have also been struck deliberately in past incidents. The outages come amid concern that Yemen’s Houthi rebels — who have carried out a campaign of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waters since late 2023 — could be behind the cuts. The group says its operations are intended to pressure Israel to end its offensive in Gaza; it has denied responsibility for some previous incidents involving undersea infrastructure.
From November 2023 into 2024 and beyond, the Houthi campaign included strikes on more than 100 vessels, according to reports and monitoring groups. Those attacks have been linked to several sinkings and fatalities among mariners. In early 2024, Yemen’s internationally recognized government in exile alleged the Houthis planned to attack undersea cables; several cables were cut at that time, a claim the Houthis denied. On Sunday, the Houthi-run al-Masirah news channel acknowledged that cuts had taken place and cited NetBlocks in its report.
Industry officials and analysts stressed that establishing responsibility for undersea cable damage requires technical assessment and often on-site inspection by repair crews. Several operators and consortium members in the affected systems had not publicly confirmed the extent of the damage as of Sunday.
The outages underscored the vulnerability of critical global communications infrastructure to both accidental and deliberate disruptions and the potential for such damage to ripple across commerce and communications in the region. Microsoft and monitoring groups said they would continue to assess impacts on routing and latency as operators work to identify and repair the breaks. Requests for comment to the companies that run the cited cable systems and to regional authorities remained outstanding.