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SMW4 and IMEWE are cut near Jeddah

node

Two of the principal Europe–Asia systems, SEA-ME-WE 4 and IMEWE, failed in the Red Sea near Jeddah at around 05:45 UTC. Traffic between Asia, the Gulf and Europe was rerouted within hours, but along longer paths: Microsoft told Azure customers to expect higher latency on traffic that had previously crossed the Middle East, and degraded performance was reported in India, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. Cloud services were restored quickly; the physical repairs were expected to take weeks or months. The episode is the cleanest recent illustration of the difference between the network recovering and the cable being fixed.

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Assembled narrative · 1

Assembled from 28 blocks · 1 evidence · 23 related

  1. Story
  2. Two of the principal Europe–Asia systems, SEA-ME-WE 4 and IMEWE, failed in the Red Sea near Jeddah at around 05:45 UTC. Traffic between Asia, the Gulf and Europe was rerouted within hours, but along longer paths: Microsoft told Azure customers to expect higher latency on traffic that had previously crossed the Middle East, and degraded performance was reported in India, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. Cloud services were restored quickly; the physical repairs were expected to take weeks or months. The episode is the cleanest recent illustration of the difference between the network recovering and the cable being fixed.
  3. Knowledge
  4. The Red Sea cable corridor
  5. Redundancy and restoration in the cable network
  6. Latency as a physical quantity
  7. SMW4 and IMEWE are cut near Jeddah
  8. Connections
  9. Latency as a physical quantity
  10. The Red Sea cable corridor
  11. Redundancy and restoration in the cable network
  12. The submarine fibre-optic cable
  13. A transatlantic cable is built to be short rather than large
  14. SMW4 and IMEWE are cut near Jeddah
  15. SEA-ME-WE 5
  16. The cable chokepoint
  17. The Egyptian cable land crossing
  18. SEA-ME-WE 5 is ready for service
  19. A sinking ship's anchor severs Red Sea cables
  20. SMW4 and IMEWE are cut near Jeddah
  21. The cable chokepoint
  22. Locating and repairing a cable fault
  23. East Asian connectivity degrades for weeks
  24. Both cables to the Matsu Islands are cut within six days
  25. Four cables fail off Côte d'Ivoire and thirteen countries lose connectivity
  26. SMW4 and IMEWE are cut near Jeddah
  27. Evidence
  28. Supports the 2024 and 2025 Red Sea incidents as described here: the cables reported affected, the assessed anchor-drag mechanism in 2024 with ICPC comment, the 05:45 UTC start of the September 2025 latency effects, and Microsoft's statement that traffic previously routed through the Middle East would see higher latency. V55 verification basis: contemporaneous journalism retrieved in summary, not primary incident reports. Cause attribution for the 2024 damage is an assessment, not a finding; the Houthi movement denied involvement in the 2025 cuts and no cause has been established here.
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/atlas?object=EVT_RED_SEA_CUTS_2025&experience=EVT_RED_SEA_CUTS_2025