Microsoft's Azure service unaffected after potential Red Sea cable sabotage

Technology company Microsoft said Saturday that its Azure cloud platform is working fine and its network traffic has not been interrupted after multiple international cables in the Red Sea were cut. The firm acknowledged that its largest cloud provider has rerouted traffic through alternate network paths.

Microsoft revealed that the disruptions began impacting network performance at 05:45 UTC on Saturday. In a status update, the firm warned its Azure users could experience higher latency, especially for traffic moving between Asia and Europe.

Microsoft reroutes data traffic to mitigate pressure from cable cuts

Microsoft didn’t specify how the cables were severed, but acknowledged that its engineering teams are working to mitigate the situation. Microsoft also claimed that undersea fiber cuts take time to repair, promising to continuously monitor, rebalance, and optimize routing to reduce customer impact.

Microsoft acknowledged that rerouting data traffic has eased some of the pressure from the disruption. According to the company, users are still facing delays and slower-than-usual connections.

According to the tech giant, the damage has affected several systems, including EIG, AAE-1, and SEACOM/TGN-EA. It has resulted in the disruption of a large share of data flow across continents.

Network traffic services had slightly improved by Sunday morning, but customers of telecoms companies in the UAE, Du and Etisalat, said home broadband and mobile services were running more slowly the previous night. According to NetBlocks, both firms also confirmed that many websites and apps failed to load.

The global internet monitoring organization also revealed that the subsea cable outages had degraded internet connectivity in other countries, including Pakistan and India. The firm said the incident is attributed to failures affecting the SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. 

Nayel Shafei, founder of telecom company Enkido, argued that NetBlocks is limiting its coverage of the outage to the transient impact on remote India and Pakistan to the south, despite reporting the damage taking place from Jeddah. Pakistan Telecommunications also confirmed on Saturday that the cuts had occurred.

Human activities cause most subsea cable disruptions

Subsea cables are responsible for 99% of the world’s digital communications, meaning that a disruption could lead to a disaster for a whole country’s internet. Oceans have approximately 1.4 million km (870,000 miles) of telecommunication cables delivering data between continents.

“There are 150 to 200 instances of damage to the global network each year. So if we look at that against 1.4 million km, that’s not very many, and for the most part, when this damage happens, it can be repaired relatively quickly.”

-Mike Clare, Marine Environmental Advisor at the International Cable Protection Committee.

Stephen Holden, head of maintenance for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at Global Marine, said that 70-80% of sea cable faults are related to accidental human activities like dropping anchors or dragging trawler boat nets. He added that only 10-20% of sea cable faults are linked to natural disasters such as submarine volcanic eruptions, typhoons, and floods.

Previous Red Sea cable cuts in the region have also raised concerns that Yemen’s Houthi rebels are responsible for attacks on the infrastructure. Yemen’s internationally recognized government revealed in early 2024 that the Houthis were allegedly orchestrating a planned attack on undersea cables in the Red Sea. The group denied being responsible after several cables were cut at the time.

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