SMW4 and IMEWE are cut near Jeddah
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.
Historical — it happened, and the record is settled.
Subjects
- The Red Sea cable corridor · maritime region · Red Sea and Gulf of Aden
- Latency as a physical quantity · physical quantity · not located
- Redundancy and restoration in the cable network · concept · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
Red Sea cable damage, 2024 and 2025
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.
Contemporary reporting including Al Jazeera, CNBC, NBC News and Network World, with ICPC comment · Partly verified
Reporting of the February 2024 Rubymar-associated damage to SEACOM, AAE-1, EIG and TGN, and of the 6 September 2025 failures of SEA-ME-WE 4 and IMEWE near Jeddah, including the Microsoft Azure service status statements on latency
Recorded on The Red Sea cable corridor
- East Asian connectivity degrades for weeks
- A transatlantic cable is built to be short rather than large
- SEA-ME-WE 5 is ready for service
- Both cables to the Matsu Islands are cut within six days
- A sinking ship's anchor severs Red Sea cables
- Four cables fail off Côte d'Ivoire and thirteen countries lose connectivity
- SMW4 and IMEWE are cut near Jeddah
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Four cables fail off Côte d'Ivoire and thirteen countries lose connectivity · 2024-03-14
- A sinking ship's anchor severs Red Sea cables · 2024-02
- Both cables to the Matsu Islands are cut within six days · 2023-02-02 – 2023-02-08
- SEA-ME-WE 5 is ready for service · 2016-12-13
- A transatlantic cable is built to be short rather than large · 2015-09
- East Asian connectivity degrades for weeks · 2006-12-26 – 2007-02