Undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea disrupted internet access in parts of Asia and the Middle East, including India, Pakistan, UAE, according to reports cited by the Associated Press (AP). However, it wasn’t immediately clear what caused the incident. Monitoring group NetBlocks claimed that “a series of subsea cable outages in the Red Sea has degraded internet connectivity in multiple countries,” specifically naming India and Pakistan among those affected. It blamed “failures affecting the SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.” Microsoft also confirmed that its Azure cloud service experienced disruptions, warning users of “increased latency” on routes passing through the Middle East. According to a status update from Microsoft, its Azure users may experience increased latency, particularly for traffic originating in or terminating in the Asia and Europe regions. “Undersea fibre cuts can take time to repair; as such, we will continuously monitor, rebalance, and optimise routing to reduce customer impact in the meantime. We’ll continue to provide daily updates, or sooner if conditions change,” Microsoft said. There has been concern about the cables being targeted in a Red Sea campaign by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, which the rebels describe as an effort to pressure Israel to … Continue reading Red Sea Cable Cuts Disrupt Internet In India, Pakistan, Middle East