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Asia In Brief Microsoft has warned that customers of its Azure cloud may experience heightened latency due to a submarine cable outage in the Red Sea.
According to an Azure status update, “Starting at 05:45 UTC on 06 September 2025, network traffic traversing through the Middle East may experience increased latency due to undersea fiber cuts in the Red Sea.”
Microsoft has routed traffic over alternate network paths but warns customers to “expect higher latency on some traffic that previously traversed through the Middle East.”
Junior cloud Linode has also warned of “network congestion and latency due to multiple faults in the undersea cables that are part of the optimal routes out of the data centers.”
The company warned: “There is currently no estimated time-to-resolution available from the undersea cable operators.”
Internet-watching firm NetBlocks has identified the SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems as the source of the problem, which it says arose near the Saudi city Jeddah.
Telegeography’s wonderful submarine cable map lists Jeddah as hosting landing stations for both cables, suggesting the problem is terrestrial rather than the result of damage on the sea floor.
