Internet service across swaths of Asia, Europe, and the Middle East has been disrupted following damages to undersea cables of major providers to the areas.
A statement from Hong Kong telecom HGC Global Communications says as much as 25% of the traffic in the areas has been impacted. The company is currently rerouting traffic to keep disruptions to a minimum and “extending assistance to affected businesses.”
There are more than 15 undersea internet cables in the Red Sea. To have four damaged at a single time is ”exceptionally rare,” HGC said in a separate earlier statement.
The disruption of the cables did not disconnect any country from the internet, but the Wall Street Journal reports service in India, Pakistan, and parts of East Africa was noticeably degraded.
No services have yet offered a reason for the cuts. Yemen’s telecom ministry denied speculation it was responsible for the failures, saying it was “keen to keep all telecom submarine cables…away from any possible risks.”
Underwater cables are responsible for most of the internet’s data traffic. They’re cheaper than land-based cables, but are prone to damage from ships’ anchors.
The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has experts wondering about the timing and severity of this outage, though. Iran-based Houthi has been particularly aggressive in the Red Sea, including in mid-February when a cargo ship was abandoned by its crew following an Houthi attack. The ship, which had weighed anchor, drifted for weeks before sinking.
Houthi control of the region and the ongoing strife in Yemen makes repairing the damaged cables more complicated. One of the four companies affected said it expects to start that process early in the second quarter, though permit issues, weather, and the civil war in that country could impact that.