Srinagar: Internet users across India, Pakistan, and parts of the Middle East experienced major disruptions after subsea cable systems in the Red Sea were damaged, internet observatory NetBlocks reported.
The Red Sea region is a major hub for undersea fibre-optic cables that carry a significant portion of global internet traffic.
According to Reuters, the outage also affected the United Arab Emirates, where users of Etisalat and Du faced difficulties accessing online services. NetBlocks traced the disruption to cable failures near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
As of now, it remains uncertain who or what caused the damage to the subsea cables. Such outages are often attributed to accidental anchor drags, natural events, or, in rare cases, intentional sabotage. The Red Sea region is a major hub for undersea fibre-optic cables that carry a significant portion of global internet traffic.
The incident underscores growing concerns about the security and maintenance of undersea cable systems, which serve as the backbone of global internet services.
Experts say disruptions in these networks can ripple across continents, affecting businesses, cloud services, and individual users alike. With the increasing reliance on cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services, ensuring the stability of these critical infrastructure systems has become more urgent than ever.
