• Overview

  A fresh round of Red Sea subsea cable cuts has slowed traffic across parts of the Middle East and South Asia and created measurable latency for Microsoft cloud services. Microsoft acknowledged the incident on its service status site, noting that customers whose traffic usually traverses the Middle East “may experience increased latency,” while traffic on other routes remains unaffected. The company has rerouted around the fiber breaks, but the episode underscores how dependent modern connectivity—and by extension Microsoft cloud services—remain on a handful of high-capacity cables in a geopolitically tense corridor. AP NewsReuters

  What happened in the Red Sea

  Multiple undersea fiber-optic systems were cut near the Jeddah, Saudi Arabia corridor beginning September 6–7, 2025, degrading internet performance for users in countries including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, India, and Pakistan. Independent monitors such as NetBlocks reported a “series of subsea cable outages,” while regional carriers e& (Etisalat) and du signaled impacts on their own networks. Early reporting pointed to the SMW4 and IMEWE systems among the affected cables, though operators have not published a full, final list. Microsoft indicated it had shifted traffic to alternate paths to keep core services up, with latency the primary user-visible symptom. ReutersABC NewsThe Times of India

  Although the Red Sea has experienced shipping attacks and other tensions since late 2023, there is no confirmed public attribution for these specific cuts. Outlets emphasized that cause and culpability remain unclear. That ambiguity, combined with the region’s strategic importance, is exactly why resilience planning for Microsoft cloud services matters. ReutersAP News

  Why the Red Sea matters to global connectivity

  The Red Sea is one of the world’s densest submarine-cable corridors, bridging Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Traffic that can’t be economically backhauled on overland fiber between continents typically rides undersea systems threading the Suez–Red Sea chokepoint. When two or more high-capacity cables in this corridor fail, rerouting options exist, but aggregate capacity and path diversity tighten quickly—exactly the dynamic now affecting Microsoft cloud services in the Middle East. The Times of India

  Immediate impact on Microsoft cloud services

  Microsoft reported the following immediate, practical effects:

  • Latency increases and jitter for customers whose routes typically crossed the affected Middle East corridor.

  • Service continuity maintained via alternate paths; no widespread, sustained outages, but intermittent slowdowns plausible as traffic rebalanced.

  • Regional variability: Customers outside the affected routing domains saw no impact.

  In short, the network kept moving, but it moved more slowly at peak times—a classic profile for a major undersea cut with live mitigation. This aligns with independent reporting from global and industry tech outlets tracking Azure and broader cloud performance. ReutersNetwork WorldTechRadar

  Who felt it—and how

  Impacts were most evident for enterprises in the Gulf, the Levant, and South Asia that backhaul workloads through Middle Eastern interconnects. Sectors with latency-sensitive applications—video collaboration hubs, real-time analytics, call centers, trading and fintech gateways, multiplayer gaming backends—were most likely to notice variability. Regional ISPs confirmed network slowdowns, and coverage from international media tracked degraded performance on a country-by-country basis. Even when workloads remained reachable, performance dips can compound: if an app calls multiple microservices across regions, small latencies add up. That’s why events like these ripple into business KPIs that depend on Microsoft cloud services response times. The Times of India

  How mitigation unfolds when cables are cut

  When a cable goes dark, a multi-layered playbook kicks in:

  1. Traffic engineering and rerouting. Microsoft and transit partners shift flows to intact cables, trading optimal paths for survivability. Expect temporary congestion as routes converge on fewer pipes. Reuters

  2. Capacity reprioritization. Providers may rate-limit lower-priority traffic to preserve business-critical flows and keep Microsoft cloud services usable for most customers. (This is often dynamic and not publicly detailed.)

  3. Repair windows. Cable repairs require specialized ships, weather windows, and permits—especially fraught in the Red Sea. Restorations can take days to weeks. Newsrooms tracking the incident stress that timelines remain fluid. Reuters

  4. Status broadcasting. Microsoft uses the Azure status portal and service health updates to inform customers about scope, mitigations, and normalization. Checking the live dashboard is best practice during incidents. Azure Status

  The security and geopolitics question

  Since 2023, the Red Sea has seen attacks on shipping and related infrastructure. That has fueled speculation that cables could be deliberately targeted. However, early reports for this incident do not establish attribution, and experts caution that anchors, earthquakes, or routine maritime hazards have historically caused many breaks. Responsible coverage emphasizes the unknowns here. Still, the strategic lesson holds: Microsoft cloud services and all cloud providers inherit the geopolitical risk profile of their submarine cable routes. AP NewsFinancial Times

  Business continuity: Practical steps for customers

  If your organization relies on Microsoft cloud services in or through the Middle East and South Asia, these measures can reduce risk from future cable cuts:

  1. Architect for multi-region, multi-AZ. Distribute critical workloads across at least two Azure regions with automatic failover. Keep state (databases, caches) replicated where latency allows.

  2. Diversify egress paths. Use Azure Front Door, Traffic Manager, or your own Anycast/GTM strategy to steer users to the healthiest edge. Consider multiple ISPs with physically diverse upstreams.

  3. Right-size redundancy. Over-provision bandwidth during volatile periods so failover links aren’t instantly saturated.

  4. Prioritize services. Implement QoS and load-shedding to keep customer-facing flows snappy while deferring batch jobs during constrained windows.

  5. Cache aggressively. Push static assets to a CDN and increase TTLs temporarily when backbone capacity tightens.

  6. Instrument everything. Monitor p95/p99 latencies, error budgets, TCP retransmits, and queue depths. Tie SLO breaches to automated mitigations, not manual dashboards.

  7. Tabletop the worst case. Run incident simulations that model simultaneous cable failures on your primary routes. Document who pulls which lever when Microsoft cloud services publish a new advisory.

  8. Check the status page first. During events, the Azure status page and your tenant’s Service Health alerts are your source of truth for scope and remediation progress. Azure Status

  What this means for the cloud more broadly

  Hyperscale clouds pride themselves on resiliency, yet their physics are still cable-bound. Compared with terrestrial fiber, undersea repairs are slow and complex. Even with abundant peering and transit diversity, hot-potato routing and capacity crunches can show up as extra 40–120 ms on cross-regional calls—enough to expose shaky retry logic or brittle timeouts. The lesson goes beyond Microsoft cloud services: portability, graceful degradation, and observability are core to reliable digital operations in 2025.

  Bottom line

  Cable breaks in the Red Sea didn’t knock Microsoft cloud services offline, but they did highlight a persistent fragility: when the corridor narrows, latency climbs. Microsoft and carriers rerouted to keep customers connected, yet the incident remains a timely nudge to design for path diversity, test failovers, and watch status signals closely—especially if your business rides Middle East routes.

  ---

  Further Reading

  • Reuters — Red Sea cable cuts disrupt internet across Asia and the Middle East; Microsoft reroutes, warns of latency. Reuters+1

  • AP News — Multiple undersea cables cut off Saudi Arabia; Microsoft warns of increased latency in the Mideast. AP News

  • ABC News — Undersea cables cut in the Red Sea, disrupting internet access in parts of Asia and the Mideast. ABC News

  • Al Jazeera — Internet disruptions in Middle East and South Asia after Red Sea cable cuts; Microsoft issues updates. Al Jazeera

  • Times of India — Microsoft issues update after undersea cables cut; why the Red Sea is critical. The Times of India

  • Network World — Red Sea cable cuts trigger latency for Azure across Asia and the Middle East. Network World

  • Azure Status — Live Microsoft Azure service health dashboard (check for ongoing advisories). Azure Status

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