History Rhymes: Multiple Subsea Cable Outages in the Red Sea Near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Microsoft has warned Azure customers of degradation in Internet performance due to "multiple outages in the Red Sea". Both IMEWE and SWM4 appear to be down near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. A subsea cable customer has told me that EIG, AAE1, and Falcon are also down or at the bare minimum damaged. Internet latency has risen in the UAE and Pakistan. Please do not speculate about saborage. It is irresponsible as Ockham's Razor applies in this situation. Ockham was a Medieval European philosopher who argued that the simplest explanation that accounts for the fact is the most plausible. It has become a bedrock principle of science. Conspiracy theoriest which include a lot of so-called national security experts routinely violate the principle in their quest for $500 an hour consulting gigs.

Multiple simultaneous outages suggest a common cause such as anchor dragging As you can see, Jeddah is effectively a single point of failure for subsea networks. Cables landing at Jeddah include

AAE-1)

Europe India Gateway (EIG)

FALCON

FLAG Europe-Asia (FEA)

IMEWE

India Europe Xpress (IEX)2025

Middle East North Africa (MENA) Cable System/Gulf Bridge International

PEACE Cable

Saudi Arabia-Sudan-1 (SAS-1)

Saudi Arabia-Sudan-2 (SAS-2)

Saudi Vision

SEACOM/Tata TGN-Eurasia

SeaMeWe-4.


It will be interesting to see how many cables have been effectively severed.

Map of Fibre Optic Subsea Cables Landing at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia



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