Srinagar: Internet services across India, Pakistan, and several Middle Eastern countries faced major disruptions after subsea cable systems in the Red Sea were damaged, internet observatory NetBlocks reported. The Red Sea is a critical corridor for undersea fibre-optic cables that handle a large share of global internet traffic.
According to Reuters, the outage also hit the United Arab Emirates, where customers of Etisalat and Du struggled to access online services. NetBlocks traced the disruption to cable failures near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Microsoft confirmed that its cloud platform, Azure, was among the affected services. In a Saturday statement, the company warned users of possible higher latency due to “multiple undersea fibre cuts in the Red Sea.” To minimise the impact, Microsoft rerouted traffic through alternative pathways outside the Middle East, Reuters said.
The company clarified that while users may face slower connections for traffic routed through the region, its global services remain unaffected. “We do expect higher latency on some traffic that previously traversed the Middle East. Network traffic that does not pass through the region is not impacted,” Microsoft noted.
The episode highlights the vulnerability of global digital infrastructure, which depends heavily on undersea cables.
