A disruption in undersea cables in the Red Sea caused major internet slowdowns across India, Pakistan, and parts of the Middle East, including the UAE. The outage affected networks such as Etisalat and highlighted how critical these subsea cables are for global connectivity. Two main cables were involved: SMW4, operated by Tata Communications, and IMEWE, managed by an Alcatel-Lucent-led consortium. While the exact cause remains unclear, subsea cables can be damaged by ship anchors, natural events, or targeted attacks, and repairs require specialized ships and crews, often taking weeks.
India relies heavily on undersea cables for international internet traffic, with about 17 cables landing at 14 stations in Mumbai, Chennai, Cochin, Tuticorin, and Trivandrum. These cables carry over 95% of India’s international data, supporting everything from e-mails and video calls to cloud services and e-commerce. Major Indian operators include Tata Communications, Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Sify Technologies, BSNL, and Vodafone, while international players like SubCom, Alcatel Submarine Networks, and TE SubCom handle global design and deployment.
Tata Communications owns five cable landing stations, Global Cloud Xchange operates the FALCON and WARF cables, Reliance Jio manages BBG and AAE-1 stations, Bharti Airtel oversees SEA-ME-WE 6 and 2Africa/EMIC-1 cables, and Sify, BSNL, and Lightstorm manage additional critical landing points. India is also expanding its network through projects like India-Asia-Express (IAX), India-Europe-Express (IEX), 2Africa Pearls, and Meta’s Project Waterworth, aimed at boosting bandwidth, reliability, and resilience against outages.
The Red Sea disruption underscores the vulnerability of global internet infrastructure, the dependence of India and other countries on a limited number of subsea cables, and the importance of investing in and protecting these critical networks to ensure a faster, more reliable, and secure digital ecosystem.
