336/68 Thursday, September 11, 2025
The recent incident involving the severing of undersea internet cables in the Red Sea over the weekend significantly reduced internet speeds in several countries, particularly in the Middle East, India, and Pakistan. The International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) stated that the cause was most likely an accident related to maritime activity, such as anchor dragging. John Wrottesley, ICPC’s Operations Manager, emphasized that 70–80% of global undersea cable damage results from unintentional human activity.
The disruption caused unusually slow internet speeds in many countries, forcing several networks to temporarily rely on 5G services. However, this led to network congestion and slower wireless performance. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), customers of du and e& reported outages affecting both home broadband and mobile internet, with some websites and applications inaccessible since Saturday night. Although conditions improved by Sunday, experts estimate it may take up to six weeks for services to fully return to normal due to the complexity of undersea cable repairs.
Microsoft was among the first companies to warn of impacts to its Azure Cloud services in the region, announcing it had rerouted traffic through backup paths to minimize disruptions for customers. The company continues to provide updates via the Azure Service Status page, noting: “Repairing subsea fiber cables takes time, so we must reroute and manage traffic to mitigate customer impact.”
