Undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea disrupted internet on Sunday, Sept 7, across parts of Asia, including India, and the Middle East.
Dubai: Undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea disrupted internet access Sunday, September 7, in parts of Asia including India, and Middle East, experts said, though it wasn’t immediately clear what caused the incident.
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 end its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But the Houthis have denied attacking the lines in the past.
NetBlocks, which monitors internet access, said “a series of subsea cable outages in the Red Sea has degraded internet connectivity in multiple countries,” which it said included India and Pakistan. It blamed “failures affecting the SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.”
The South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4 cable is run by Tata Communications, part of the Indian conglomerate. The India-Middle East-Western Europe cable is run by another consortium overseen by Alcatel-Lucent. Both firms did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
