Internet users across the UAE, India, Pakistan, and parts of Africa faced significant disruptions over the weekend after two major subsea cables—SEA-ME-WE 4 (SMW4) and IMEWE—were damaged near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The cuts, reported by global internet observatory NetBlocks, forced telecommunications providers to reroute traffic through alternative pathways, leading to widespread slowdowns in services like web browsing, streaming, and messaging apps. Customers of UAE operators Etisalat by e& and du reported a surge of issues, with Downdetector logging hundreds of outage complaints peaking around 9 pm local time on Saturday.

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The Red Sea corridor carries approximately 17% of global internet traffic between Asia, Europe, and Africa, according to telecom research firm TeleGeography. This makes it one of the world’s most critical digital chokepoints, where even localized faults can cascade across continents. The region’s shallow waters, busy shipping lanes, and geopolitical tensions—including ongoing conflicts involving Houthi rebels—heighten risks for both accidental and deliberate damage. As Microsoft noted in a service status update, Azure users experienced higher-than-normal latency for traffic traversing the Middle East, though the company mitigated impacts by rerouting through other paths. Pakistan’s PTCL also confirmed reduced capacity but secured alternative bandwidth.

Repairing such damage is a herculean task, warns the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC). Specialized vessels must locate, retrieve, splice, and test the fiber-optic cables—a process susceptible to weather, logistics, and legal delays, often costing $1–3 million. Past incidents, like the 2023 cuts from a Houthi-damaged vessel, took weeks to resolve due to denied repair access. With regional instability persisting, repairs this time could extend for months, forcing businesses reliant on real-time connectivity—such as finance and logistics—to brace for prolonged latency.

This incident highlights systemic vulnerabilities in a global internet infrastructure dependent on concentrated routes. As NetBlocks and TeleGeography data show, traffic rerouting through longer, congested paths inevitably degrades performance for latency-sensitive applications like cloud services and video conferencing. The solution, analysts argue, lies in diversifying cable routes and integrating satellite backups to reduce reliance on high-risk corridors like the Red Sea. For developers and network engineers, this underscores the urgency of designing systems with built-in redundancy and failover mechanisms to withstand such black swan events.

Source: Based on reporting from The National.