Microsoft Azure Traffic Slowed After Red Sea Undersea Cable Cuts

Microsoft said some Azure cloud services experienced delays after undersea fibre cables in the Red Sea were cut, a disruption that affected internet traffic routed through the Middle East.

In an online update posted Saturday, Microsoft said Azure customers may experience increased latency for traffic that transits the region and that it had rerouted traffic through alternate paths. The company said traffic that does not traverse the Middle East was not impacted and did not provide an explanation for what caused the undersea cable damage.

Monitoring group NetBlocks reported a series of subsea cable cuts in the Red Sea over the weekend and said the incidents affected internet services in several countries, including India and Pakistan. Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited posted on X that cables were cut in waters near the Saudi city of Jeddah and warned that internet services could be degraded during peak hours. NetBlocks also reported disruptions in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday.

Cables laid on the ocean floor carry the bulk of intercontinental internet traffic and are routinely described as the backbone of global connectivity. Damage to these cables can occur from ship anchors and fishing activity, but cables have also been targeted in deliberate attacks in previous incidents.

In February 2024, multiple communications cables in the Red Sea were cut, interrupting data flows between Asia and Europe. That incident came about a month after Yemen's internationally recognised government warned that the Iran-backed Houthi movement might sabotage undersea infrastructure in addition to attacking ships; the Houthis denied targeting cables. Authorities in other regions have investigated suspected sabotage on undersea infrastructure as well. Since 2022, a series of incidents in the Baltic Sea affecting cables and pipelines has been treated as possible attacks, and Swedish authorities earlier this year seized a vessel suspected of damaging a cable to Latvia.

Microsoft did not identify specific countries or customers affected beyond its general statement that latency could increase for traffic routed through the Middle East. The company said routing adjustments were in place to mitigate impact, but did not provide a timeline for full restoration of normal service levels.

Network-monitoring organisations and national telecom operators typically detect such disruptions through traffic-pattern changes and customer reports. When cuts occur in chokepoints such as the Red Sea, rerouting often sends traffic along longer paths that increase latency and can cause congestion on alternate links, leading to slower service for cloud-hosted applications, enterprise services and web traffic.

No official maritime or military agency has publicly attributed the weekend cuts to a cause, and Microsoft stopped short of saying whether the damage was accidental or deliberate. Analysts and industry experts have said redundancy and diverse routing are central to minimising customer impact when subsea cables are damaged, but rerouting cannot always prevent visible slowdowns.

Cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure are among the largest consumers of global bandwidth, and disruptions that affect undersea cables can have cascading effects for businesses and consumers that rely on cloud-hosted services. Microsoft’s public update emphasised that only traffic traversing the Middle East was subject to increased latency and that other Azure traffic remained unaffected.

National regulators and operators have in past incidents coordinated repairs that can take days to weeks depending on the location and severity of damage. Repair typically requires specialised cable-laying ships to locate the break, retrieve the damaged segment and splice in new fibre, a process that can be complicated by weather and geopolitical conditions in the region.

The weekend cuts mark the latest high-profile disruption to subsea infrastructure and underscore the continued vulnerability of the global internet to both accidental damage and potential sabotage. Microsoft and regional telecom operators continue to assess routing and service status, and customers experiencing degraded Azure performance were advised to consult Microsoft’s service updates and their providers for further information.