Microsoft said customers of its Azure cloud platform experienced elevated latency after multiple subsea cables in the Red Sea were cut, disrupting traffic flowing between the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. The company noted it rerouted traffic to minimize impact and later reported normal service levels, while monitoring continued.
The incident rippled beyond a single cloud provider. NetBlocks reported degraded internet connectivity across several countries, including India and Pakistan, consistent with a regional capacity squeeze. The cause of the cable damage was not confirmed; according to the Associated Press, Yemen’s Houthi movement has denied targeting communications cables.
Microsoft’s Routing Response and Customer Impact
In a status note, Microsoft said workloads transiting the Middle East or terminating in Asia or Europe were most affected, with users observing slower response times rather than outright outages. Azure’s mitigation relied on rebalancing traffic across alternate paths, a standard playbook when a high-capacity corridor suddenly loses fibers.
Rerouting helps maintain availability but can add tens to hundreds of milliseconds of latency for some routes, especially on Europe–Asia paths that must detour. Enterprises with latency-sensitive applications—trading, real-time collaboration, and interactive gaming—tend to feel these bumps first, though most workloads tolerate the temporary round-trip increase.
Why the Red Sea Is a Digital Chokepoint
The Red Sea and Suez corridor carries a dense cluster of subsea cables that tie Europe to Asia, making it one of the most strategically important stretches of internet infrastructure. Industry maps from TeleGeography show more than a dozen systems packed through this narrow passage, including major trunk lines that underpin cloud and telecom backbones.
Because so many systems converge in a confined geography, single-point hazards—anchoring incidents, seismic activity, or conflict-related risks—can remove significant capacity at once. Even when only a subset of cables are affected, the remaining systems quickly saturate, forcing carriers and clouds to shift traffic onto longer, less direct routes.
Fixing Subsea Cables Takes Time
Undersea fiber repairs are logistical and regulatory marathons. Cable owners must dispatch a specialized repair vessel, secure permits, locate the fault, raise the cable, splice in new fiber, and test—all in a high-traffic waterway. In normal conditions, operators and analysts say fixes can take one to three weeks; adverse weather, safety constraints, or restricted access can extend timelines.
The Red Sea adds complexity: busy shipping lanes, regional tensions, and shallow segments where cables are more exposed to anchors and fishing gear. During prolonged outages, carriers often purchase temporary capacity on alternative systems or reroute around Africa, which protects continuity but further increases latency for Europe–Asia flows.
Cloud and Telecom Ripple Effects
Azure’s swift mitigation underscores how hyperscalers architect for path diversity, but no provider is immune to chokepoint shocks. Azure is the second-largest public cloud by revenue, with roughly a quarter of the global market according to Synergy Research Group, so even localized latency issues attract scrutiny from multinational customers.
Beyond enterprise apps, cable cuts can squeeze consumer services as ISPs throttle or reprioritize traffic to preserve stability. Network measurement outfits such as NetBlocks often detect these constraints as nationwide slowdowns. Similar Red Sea disruptions earlier this year prompted noticeable congestion in parts of East Africa and South Asia, a pattern consistent with the current reports.
What to Watch Next
Key signals to monitor include restoration timelines from cable consortia, capacity auctions for interim routes, and whether additional systems report faults. Cloud status pages may remain green while back-end routing continues to shift, so customers with strict latency budgets should track their own telemetry and consider region failovers where feasible.
Longer term, resilience will hinge on diversifying away from single corridors. New systems around Africa and in the Eastern Mediterranean are adding options, but geography ensures the Red Sea will remain pivotal. For now, Microsoft’s rerouting has contained the immediate Azure impact, yet the episode is a fresh reminder that the cloud still ultimately rides on glass threads on the seafloor.