Red Sea internet cable damage affects Asia-Europe traffic

HGC Global Communications reported on Monday that four submarine cables in the Red Sea - Seacom, TGN-Gulf, Asia-Africa-Europe 1, and Europe India Gateway - were damaged. Efforts are underway to mitigate the impact on customers. Data transfer to Europe is now being rerouted via cables in mainland China and under the Pacific Ocean to the USA. Other Red Sea cables are also being utilised.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington highlighted that about 97 percent of global data is transmitted through several hundred submarine cables. "These cables are vital to the global information economy, spanning over 867,000 miles and linking almost every country in the world. This number is expanding, as major tech companies both lay and manage their own cables. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft now control about half of all the submarine bandwidth worldwide," according to the report.

The African telecommunication cable operator Seacom informed the Associated Press that "preliminary tests indicate that the damaged segment is within Yemeni maritime jurisdiction in the southern Red Sea." Meanwhile, a Pentagon official confirmed to CBS News, the American partner of BBC, that submarine telecommunications cables in the Red Sea were cut. The United States is investigating whether the damage was intentional or inadvertently caused by an anchor from the Rubymar ship that sank in the Gulf of Aden.

It is worth noting: initially, the Houthi, a Yemeni armed group that supports Hamas, were blamed when the cables were damaged. However, an analysis by the German company DE-CIX suggests it wasn’t the Yemeni terrorists who directly caused the communication disruption but more likely the crew of the Rubymar ship.

Last month, the Yemeni government warned that the Iran-backed Houthi movement might sabotage submarine cables and attack ships at sea. The Houthis, who control a significant part of the western coast of the Red Sea in Yemen, denied last week that they had attacked cables and blamed American and British military attacks for any damages. US and British forces had previously attacked Houthi weapons and infrastructure in response to drone and missile attacks on commercial ships navigating through the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.