Microsoft was forced to reroute Azure traffic on Saturday, September 6, after two major submarine cable systems were severed in the Red Sea, triggering latency spikes and degraded performance for cloud users across South Asia and the Gulf. The company confirmed the disruption via Azure system status messages just before 06:00 UTC, saying customers whose traffic normally passes through the Middle East “may experience service disruptions.”
Those reroutes currently remain in effect, with Microsoft noting that they expect “higher latency on some traffic” into September 7 as regional carriers continue to triage routes. Cloud operations outside the affected path remain unaffected, but workloads relying on Asia-Europe connectivity may still feel the impact.
The damage occurred on the SEA-ME-WE-4 and IMEWE cable systems, both of which run through the high-risk corridor near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The location and systems were first flagged by NetBlocks, which attributed the disruption to a “series of subsea cable outages” causing Internet slowdowns in Pakistan, India, and parts of the Gulf. Microsoft has not named the specific cables involved.
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From a technical perspective, these aren’t just any cables: They’re two of the main long-haul systems connecting Asia to Europe, carrying traffic not only for consumer Internet but also hyperscalers like Google and Meta. Losing just one of these critical pathways can overload alternate routes, spike latency, and increase packet loss across various cloud-dependent applications, such as multiplayer gaming and large file downloads.
Repairs could take weeks
Microsoft engineers have rerouted traffic via alternative, longer paths while monitoring network telemetry. Repair ships for undersea cables are scarce, however, and the Red Sea remains a geopolitically sensitive area, making any physical repairs an inevitably slow process. Such repairs can take weeks because repair crews must precisely locate themselves above the damaged cable.
This isn’t the first time that the Red Sea has caused headaches. In February 2024, multiple submarine cables, including AE-1, SEACOM, and EIG, were damaged by an unknown cause. Due to the sensitivity of the location, cable operators are currently unable to give a timeline for full repairs, but it was reported in July 2024 that repairs were completed on the AAE-1 cable. In January 2025, the same cable suffered a shunt fault off the coast of Qatar, which was resolved two weeks later.
As of now, Azure remains operational, but enterprises reliant on cross-region connectivity between Europe, South Asia, and the Middle East should brace for slower connections in the meantime.
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