 "Red Sea undersea cable outages slow internet in West, South Asia; India says services unaffected")
A string of undersea cable failures in the Red Sea has disrupted internet services across multiple nations, including in South Asia, according to global connectivity tracker NetBlocks.
The group flagged India as one of the affected countries, but Indian telecom providers maintained there was no noticeable impact on domestic data networks. Operators said their systems are built with redundancy, supported by numerous submarine cable routes to prevent outages.
One of the affected systems, the South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 (SMW4) cable, is jointly run by a consortium that includes Tata Communications. The company has not responded to queries on the situation.
The precise reason for the disruption remains unclear. However, reports have raised the possibility of links to unrest in the Red Sea region tied to Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
NetBlocks in a post on X said: ”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.” In a status update, Microsoft warned Azure users of increased network latency on traffic routes through the Middle East.
”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,” it said.
The Microsoft update further informed users: ”We do expect higher latency on some traffic that previously traversed through the Middle East”.
Network traffic that does not traverse through the Middle East is not impacted, it said promising regular updates if conditions change.
Undersea cable outages disrupt global connectivity by severing data flows across vital digital routes, and repair and restoration can be complex and tricky. Typically, undersea cable cuts are a result of accidental ship anchors, natural disasters, sabotage or conflicts. PTI MBI HVA
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