In late February 2024, a sudden and significant internet disruption rippled through India, Pakistan, and other parts of Asia. The source: damaged undersea cables in the Red Sea—specifically the Seacom, TGN-Gulf, and AAE-1 networks, which together carry a substantial share of data traffic between Europe and Asia. At least four critical fiber optic links went offline, cutting down bandwidth and slowing communications in densely populated regions.

Initial investigations suggest that large commercial ships operating in this heavily trafficked maritime corridor may have caused the damage. The likely scenario involves anchor drag or cable snagging, a known risk in congested shipping lanes. While telecom operators scrambled to reroute data flows through alternative networks, users in affected countries experienced reduced speeds and dropped connections for days. What patterns led to this incident, and what can satellite tracking reveal about the ships implicated?

Submarine Communication Cables: Invisible Lifelines Beneath the Sea

Stretching thousands of kilometers across ocean floors, submarine communication cables form the backbone of global digital connectivity. These fiber optic lines transmit more than 95% of all international internet and data traffic, according to TeleGeography, a telecommunications market research firm. Unlike satellites, which contribute to latency and offer limited bandwidth, these submerged cables provide high-capacity, low-latency pathways that support everything from video calls and financial transactions to cloud computing and military communications.

Laid out in sprawling networks, submarine cables cross vast bodies of water to link continents, forming nodes in a global web of instantaneous communication. Data flows silently beneath the waves, shielded only by layers of optical fiber, steel strength members, waterproofing, and polyethylene casing. Their critical function often escapes public awareness—until an incident disrupts the stream.

Nowhere is their importance more pronounced than along the Asia-Middle East-Europe (AMEE) route, an arterial corridor that passes through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal region. This high-density subsea route carries massive volumes of data between economic powerhouses across the Eastern Hemisphere. Submarine cable systems such as SEACOM, AAE-1, EIG, and SMW5—several of which pass directly through the Red Sea—serve as primary channels linking Asia’s digital economies with markets in Europe and Africa.

For countries including India, Pakistan, Oman, and Saudi Arabia, these cables provide central connectivity to content delivery networks, global cloud providers, and international telecom carriers. As many as 17 major submarine cable systems converge through Egypt, making it one of the most strategic chokepoints in the global internet architecture.

Take India, for instance—its digital infrastructure leans heavily on outgoing submarine links routed through Mumbai, which then merge into larger systems heading toward Europe via the Red Sea. A break or delay in these pathways can ripple through financial sectors, enterprise IT systems, and consumer internet services across South Asia. In Pakistan and the Gulf states, similar dependencies drive a shared reliance on continual cable uptime through the region.

When damage occurs along this route, the network absorbs the shock slowly and unevenly, rerouting what it can but often at the cost of speed and stability. Given these cables' massive bandwidth loads and unique positioning, even partial outages don’t go unnoticed. They throttle intercontinental data flows, burden auxiliary systems, and reveal the fragility below the ocean’s surface.

The Red Sea: A Vital yet Vulnerable Underwater Highway

Geographic Importance in Global Data and Marine Trade

The Red Sea forms a strategic link between Europe, Asia, and Africa, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean through the Suez Canal. This narrow waterway handles one of the highest concentrations of maritime trade globally. According to the International Chamber of Shipping, over 12% of global trade passes through the Suez Canal each year, with much of it transiting the Red Sea. Alongside this dense shipping activity runs another critical layer: a concentrated network of submarine communication cables.

More than a dozen international cable systems run through the Red Sea corridor, carrying up to 17% of the world’s internet traffic. These fiber optic lines provide connectivity between major data centers in Europe and Asia. Unlike terrestrial infrastructure, these subsea cables have limited redundancy in this region, making each route an irreplaceable component in the global data flow.

Overlapping Routes: Cables and Cargo

Marine charts of the Red Sea reveal significant overlap between shipping lanes and cable routes. Large vessels, including container ships and oil tankers, use the same confined corridor where cables lie buried just meters below the seabed in soft sediment. Anchoring, dredging, and maritime accidents—especially in the narrow Bab el-Mandeb and Gulf of Suez areas—increase the risk of cable damage.

This overlap introduces complex navigation hazards. Modern cable sediment burial techniques can reduce exposure, but cannot eliminate the threat posed by massive anchors dragging across the sea floor. Cable protection zones and designated anchorage areas attempt to regulate activity, yet enforcement remains inconsistent across jurisdictions.

Maintaining Infrastructure in a Crowded Sea

Technical and logistical challenges compound due to the crowded state of the Red Sea. With hundreds of daily vessel movements and geopolitical friction in bordering states, coordination across stakeholders is limited. Cable repair ships require permits to operate, often spending days awaiting clearance from multiple national authorities. Delays directly translate to longer outages.

Furthermore, visibility into real-time maritime impacts remains fragmented. Operators often rely on cable signal monitoring to detect damage after it’s done, while tracking ship positions only helps during investigative response. Proactive infrastructural resilience—such as deeper burial or rerouting—requires international collaboration that has so far been slow to materialize in this contested regional space.

As more cables funnel through the Red Sea, reliance on this underwater highway continues to climb, but so does its susceptibility to disruption. Maintenance crews, telecom operators, and maritime regulators all work a delicate balancing act between efficiency and operational risk in a zone where cables and commerce meet head-on.

Commercial Shipping and Maritime Infrastructure Damage

Rapid Expansion of Shipping Traffic in the Red Sea

Over the last decade, commercial shipping through the Red Sea has intensified significantly. Growth in global trade and rerouting from piracy-prone areas like the Gulf of Aden have pushed more vessels into this strategic corridor. According to data from the Suez Canal Authority, vessel transits increased from under 17,000 in 2011 to over 23,000 in 2023—an increase of nearly 35% in just over a decade. Bulk cargo ships, oil tankers, and container ships crisscross this narrow stretch of water daily, passing within tight lanes loaded with critical undersea communications infrastructure.

How Anchors and Navigational Accidents Cut Cables

Submarine cables are typically buried beneath the seabed in shallow regions but remain exposed in deep waters or rocky terrain. Anchors, dragged either due to strong currents, emergency stops, or navigational misjudgments, can easily snag or sever these fiber-optic lines. A container ship deploying its anchor too close to a designated cable zone creates a high-risk scenario. With anchor points weighing several tonnes, the force can crush or rip a cable's sheath, exposing the fibers to seawater or snapping the connection entirely.

Behavior of Vessels Linked to the Red Sea Outage

Satellite AIS (Automatic Identification System) tracking data analyzed around the time of the Red Sea cable incidents in February 2024 shows unusual maneuvers by at least one commercial vessel near known cable coordinates south of Yemen. Experts at maritime analytics firms such as Windward and MarineTraffic identified erratic positions and drift patterns inconsistent with standard transit lines. When vessels anchor outside designated zones or attempt emergency halts in these waters, they risk damaging infrastructure laid directly along those paths.

Investigators from Network Atlas and the East Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) consortium pointed out that at the time of the disruption, sea traffic had rerouted closer to shore due to geopolitical risks near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. This shift placed vessels directly above sensitive cable clusters, raising the probability of unintentional severances.

Historical Precedents of Shipping-Related Cable Breaks

• In July 2008, a drag anchor from a cargo ship off the coast of Dubai caused two independent cable cuts, leading to over 70% voice call degradation in Egypt and India.
• In 2013, the SEA-ME-WE-4 cable suffered damage 6 kilometers off Alexandria after a fishing trawler deployed illegal anchoring, resulting in capacity losses for multiple Middle Eastern telecom providers.
• More recently, in February 2021, a vessel attempting to evade pirates dropped anchor over the EIG cable near Djibouti, causing days-long outages across East Africa.

None of these incidents were due to malice; instead, they reveal the vulnerability of maritime zones where commercial urgency collides with invisible digital infrastructure. The working assumption among marine cable operators remains unchanged: the more traffic congests these routes, the greater the risk of inadvertent damage.

Ripple Effects: How the Red Sea Cable Cut Disrupted Telecommunications Across Asia

Severe Disruptions in South Asia’s Internet Access

When multiple undersea cables were severed in the Red Sea in early 2024, the shockwaves extended far beyond the Middle East. In Asia, nations such as India and Pakistan bore the brunt of these disruptions. According to analysis from Kentik, a network observability company, around 25% of internet traffic in Pakistan was impacted within hours of the outage. India, while more diversified in its internet routes, still experienced slowed connectivity and regional packet loss in its western corridor.

These outages weren’t uniform. Urban centers with high levels of digital infrastructure showed greater resilience, but rural and underserved regions suffered longer recovery times and intermittent connection failures.

Emergency Maneuvers: Telecom Providers Reroute Data

Faced with sudden bandwidth loss, major Asian telecom providers initiated emergency rerouting protocols. Internet traffic that previously flowed westward via the Red Sea cables was redirected through eastern routes passing through Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Pacific subsea systems. This rebalancing overloaded alternative pathways, causing congestion and latency spikes across multiple regions.

For instance, Tata Communications redirected strategic traffic via its Eurasia route, while Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) shifted reliance to the Trans-Asia-Europe (TAE) cable where capacity permitted.

Provider Reports and Recovery Forecasts

Statements from regional ISPs and Tier 1 providers reflected real-time damage control and cautious optimism. PTCL confirmed degradation across its internet services and announced partial restoration within 48 hours using alternate links. Bharti Airtel, in coordination with global partners, estimated full service standardization within 72 hours, though noted that latency to Europe remained elevated.

International infrastructure consortia, including those managing the SeaMeWe-5 and AAE-1 cables, released coordinated updates indicating that at least four major cable systems had been affected. Restoration crews were mobilized, but confirmation of repair timelines awaited the deployment of specialized cable-laying vessels and assessment of physical damage undersea.

Asia's Digital Pulse: A Dependency Exposed

This incident highlighted just how deeply modern economies depend on uninterrupted digital connectivity. From real-time market feeds in Mumbai to remote education portals in Islamabad, services across banking, healthcare, media, and logistics experienced cascading effects. Packet-reliant industries faced not just service delays but operational grind, with companies reporting time-sensitive transaction failures and data sync issues.

With more than 95% of global data traffic traveling through submarine cables, and Asia positioning itself as a digital supply chain hub, such infrastructural vulnerabilities carry weighty economic consequences. The bandwidth gap created by the Red Sea incident forced policymakers and corporate strategists alike to rethink failover planning, resilience testing, and regional redundancy.

• India: Partial traffic slowdowns in enterprise and cloud computing services, heavily affected in western-tier data centers.
• Pakistan: Nationwide ISP slowdowns, affecting public services, fintech apps, and VoIP services.
• Regional CDN nodes: Overloaded as rerouted traffic surged, prompting brief service degradation across Southeast Asia.

Are Asia’s digital systems too centralized around a few chokepoints? This event turns that question from rhetorical to operational.

Investigating the Cause: Experts Weigh In

Telecom Engineers and Cybersecurity Analysts Highlight Mechanical Damage

Following the disruption of multiple submarine cables in the Red Sea in early 2024, technical experts from major cable consortiums—such as the Europe India Gateway (EIG) and AAE-1—pointed to consistent patterns of physical damage. Senior telecom engineers reviewed diagnostic data indicating abnormal tension and signal loss near section points, suggesting an external force had compromised the cables rather than internal malfunctions or natural events.

Cybersecurity analysts from firms like FireEye and Palo Alto Networks ruled out cyber-related origins. Analysis of upstream network logs showed no signs of intrusions or data tampering concurrent with the cable failures. Diagnostic forensics narrowed the cause to seabed interference, and all indicators aligned with blunt force trauma—likely from a ship anchor or dragging chain.

Findings from the Official Investigations

Preliminary results from the Red Sea Cable Maintenance Agreement (RSMA), which coordinates emergency repairs and investigations, confirmed that the breaks occurred in shallow international waters frequented by heavy commercial traffic. While three cables were severed in a 48-hour window, no seismic activity or detected sabotage signatures suggested coordinated targeting.

Investigators combined nautical traffic logs, automatic identification system (AIS) data, and seabed inspection records. Results pointed to erratic movements by two commercial vessels—bulk carrier and container classes—whose recorded anchors drifted well outside standard anchorage zones during high winds on February 24. The correlation between the vessels' track overlays and the cable break coordinates revealed a direct overlap down to ±10 meters.

Maritime Tracking and Ocean Floor Survey Techniques Narrow Down the Cause

Deployment of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) provided visual confirmation. High-resolution video recorded cable segments separated with frayed fiber sheathing and metal strain, consistent with mechanical snagging. No signs of thermal impact or explosive residue were found. Fiber optics were pulled rather than cut, eliminating sabotage through divers or submersible devices.

Using AIS replay combined with multibeam sonar scans, maritime forensic analysts reconstructed the underwater trajectory of suspected vessels. The simulation matched the dragging pattern seen on the ocean floor. This granular mapping offered indisputable evidence that commercial ships—likely anchoring improperly during storm conditions—caused the damage while attempting to maintain station in a traffic-heavy corridor.

Theories Considered—and Abandoned

Early theories ranged from malicious state actors deploying underwater drones to rebel sabotage amid regional tensions. However, these were dismissed by investigators citing both lack of motive and forensic mismatch. Marine biologists also dismissed tectonic or fauna-related disruptions. The concentration on human activity remained due to physical trace evidence and recurring vessel routes.

No military presence was detected during the time frame in question. Satellite infrared data and classified surveillance shared among international monitoring agencies confirmed commercial—not strategic—traffic density at the incident locus.

Each recovered cable section told a consistent story: external tearing from sustained force by heavy maritime equipment. The consensus across industry and governmental experts is clear—human error, not hostile intent, severed the Red Sea’s fiber lifelines.

Cybersecurity and Physical Infrastructure Tensions

Physical damage to submarine communication cables doesn't just cut data flow — it exposes deeper strategic fault lines in the global cybersecurity landscape. While the internet is often imagined as a virtual cloud, its core infrastructure relies heavily on physical lines vulnerable to blunt force and malign intent alike. The Red Sea incident highlights how mechanical disruptions can ripple into digital vulnerabilities with far-reaching consequences.

Where Physical Vulnerability Fuels Digital Risk

When a submarine cable gets severed, rerouting takes over — diverting traffic through alternative paths that may travel across different countries or network infrastructures. These detours not only increase latency but may expose data to varying degrees of surveillance and cyber intrusion. Intelligence agencies and threat actors often monitor shifts in data flow for reconnaissance opportunities. In high-risk geopolitical areas like the Red Sea, accidental or intentional cuts can hand cyber adversaries a strategic advantage.

Disruptions Multiply Attack Surfaces

Redundancy plays a role, but even with multiple paths, bandwidth is not evenly distributed. Congested failover networks, hastily configured during outages, open doors for man-in-the-middle attacks, packet sniffing, or insertion of malware payloads. Past studies from the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) have confirmed that cable disruptions can trigger anomalies across layers of the internet stack — from DNS vulnerabilities to protocol spoofing opportunities.

State and Non-State Actors: A Historical Pattern

Disruptions to undersea infrastructure rarely occur in a vacuum. Intelligence briefings and historical assessments link a range of incidents to military and non-military actors. In 2008, for example, a series of cuts in cables connecting to the Middle East and India prompted scrutiny from NATO allies, with some analysts pointing to activities by regional powers. Russia has also drawn attention for the movements of its Yantar reconnaissance vessel, tracked near undersea cable routes from the Atlantic to the Pacific, sparking concerns over dual-purpose capabilities.

Non-state groups have demonstrated capability too. In 2013, Egyptian authorities arrested divers suspected of attempting to sever a link near Alexandria — a key node where multiple routes converge. Their motive remains unclear, but the incident confirmed that even limited technical expertise can endanger global connectivity.

• Strategic locations like chokepoints in the Red Sea invite surveillance and sabotage.
• Physical outages create invisible spillovers in cybersecurity frameworks.
• Historical patterns show increasing overlap between physical sabotage and digital exploitation.

In short, the old firewall/router binary is obsolete in a world where trawlers, submarines, and even grappling hooks can trigger global digital consequences. The Red Sea cable incident forces policymakers and infrastructure guardians to treat physical assets not just as utility hardware, but as national security interests deeply woven into the cyber fabric of the 21st century.

Middle East Turbulence and the Fragility of Undersea Networks

Fluid Alliances and Escalating Tensions Amplify Infrastructure Vulnerabilities

The Red Sea region sits at the intersection of persistent geopolitical fault lines. Political instability in Yemen, expanding influence operations by Iran, maritime disputes, and Israel's shifting security posture shape an environment of chronic uncertainty. Each conflict, each maneuver by state or non-state actors adds a layer of operational risk, especially for infrastructure lying beneath contested waters.

Shipping lanes cutting through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait are more than just conduits of global trade—they now carry risks not just to cargo vessels but to the fragile communications cables lining the seabed. The same vessels that move consumer goods and energy supplies navigate waters increasingly shaped by military posturing, embargoes, and drone surveillance. The proximity of these digital arteries to regional flashpoints exposes global connectivity to disruptions far beyond their physical location.

Cable Disruptions as Collateral Damage in Regional Standoffs

Even unintended consequences escalate rapidly. A naval incident, a misfired drone, or rerouting of ships due to conflict onshore can translate into damage to undersea cables without direct hostile intent. Unlike attacks on terrestrial infrastructure, cable severances at sea are harder to assign blame for, often falling into a murky category between negligence and accident. Yet the operational realities reveal clear patterns—intensifying geopolitical friction increases occurrences of maritime incidents threatening these underwater systems.

Signals from International Bodies: Mounting Concern

Statements from organizations including the International Court of Justice, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and the United Nations signal unease. The IMO, in particular, has highlighted the Red Sea as a high-risk area not only for piracy but now also for unintentional damage to critical infrastructure from commercial and military maritime activity. In addition, governments including the United Kingdom, France, and the United States have begun incorporating undersea cable protection measures into broader maritime security strategies. These responses reflect a clear pattern: when regional conflict escalates, so does infrastructure vulnerability.

• UN Security Council resolutions increasingly reference infrastructure threats as secondary impacts of conflict zones.
• Middle Eastern telecom regulators have initiated contingency planning in light of Red Sea cable fragility.
• Defense reviews in NATO countries now include references to undersea cable sabotage and wartime disruption planning.

Have military doctrines evolved to treat commercial data infrastructure as strategic assets? Evidence suggests yes. How governments plan for war and deterrence now includes protecting cables that carry financial transactions, military communications, and cloud data. The geopolitical storyline playing out in the Middle East no longer skips over submarine infrastructure—it treats it as a new frontline.

Fortifying the Backbone: Building Resiliency into Global Data Infrastructure

Redundant Cable Routes and Satellite Connectivity

Submarine cables carry over 97% of international data traffic, according to TeleGeography. A single point of failure, like the Red Sea incident, exposes the fragility of this system. Routing data through alternate undersea cable paths minimizes disruption. In practice, this involves complex cable diversification strategies. Cable owners increasingly design systems with split landing points and routing circuits through varied geographies—avoiding chokepoints such as the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

Satellite connectivity, although limited in capacity compared to fiber-optic cables, supplements routing flexibility. Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations, such as SpaceX’s Starlink and OneWeb, introduced high-throughput, low-latency alternatives. These now form part of hybrid network architecture, delivering temporary relief when cable faults occur or when regional links are severed.

The Role of International Cable Consortiums and Internet Exchange Points

Most subsea cables are financed, built, and maintained by multi-party consortiums made up of telecom carriers, cloud service providers, and tech conglomerates. These collaborations reduce cost burdens while coordinating infrastructure diversification. For example, the SEA-ME-WE 6 cable, backed by over 10 international members, routes data between Southeast Asia and Europe with landing points circumventing politically sensitive hot zones.

Alongside cables, Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) distribute internet traffic locally and regionally, reducing latency and offloading international bandwidth. Neutral IXPs, particularly in developing economies, reduce reliance on long-haul transit providers. These facilities also give domestic carriers more control over peering, translating to more resilient national internet accessibility during global network outages.

Investment Calls from Infrastructure Experts

Leading infrastructure analysts are pushing for renewed investment in cable resiliency. The Submarine Telecoms Forum reports a 68% rise in planned subsea cable projects between 2020 and 2024, driven by both hyperscale cloud providers and regional governments. Yet, resilience isn't just about adding cables—it’s about strategic planning.

• Mapping of geopolitical hotspots when deciding new cable routes.
• Mutual access agreements between consortiums to enable fast traffic re-routing.
• Public-private partnerships to fund localized branch-off points.

Each of these recommendations aims to decouple network uptime from regional instability, an issue brought into sharp relief by the Red Sea disruption.

Real-Time Monitoring with AI and IoT

Modern cable resiliency increasingly relies on predictive maintenance enabled by artificial intelligence and IoT sensor suites. AI can analyze terabytes of telemetry from repeaters, power feeds, and environmental sensors every day. These models then forecast the likelihood of a fault or physical disturbance before damage occurs.

In parallel, fiber-optic sensing technologies convert cables themselves into distributed acoustic sensors. This allows the detection of underwater activity—such as anchor drags or seismic shifts—by analyzing backscattered light patterns over distance. Combined with machine learning classifiers, operators can identify threats in real time and act before service degradation starts.

What does this all add up to? A global data backbone that can outmaneuver both man-made disruption and natural degradation. Not theoretical future-tech, but systems already being deployed along major cable routes from the Pacific Rim to the Mediterranean.

Balancing Trade and Connectivity: Lessons from a Disrupted Network

When multiple submarine cables in the Red Sea were damaged in early 2024, over 25% of Asia's internet traffic via Europe was rerouted, triggering latency issues, throttled bandwidth, and service interruptions from Pakistan to Kenya. Investigations point toward commercial shipping activity, not sabotage, as the probable cause. In a region where three maritime chokepoints intersect with critical data infrastructure, this incident exposes not only physical vulnerability but also systemic blind spots in global connectivity planning.

The disruptions not only affected end-users but strained international transit providers and national-tier ISPs. With over 95% of intercontinental data traffic carried via submarine cables, according to TeleGeography, damage to even a small number of fibers introduces stress to the greater network. The physical proximity between shipping lanes and cable corridors in narrow passages like Bab el-Mandeb significantly magnifies this risk.

Rewriting Priorities in Asia's Data Strategy

Asia, particularly data centers and internet exchanges in India, Singapore, Japan, and the Gulf states, depends on western transit points. The outage accelerated regional discussions to diversify routing through East Asia-Pacific, branch further into Africa via longer undersea spurs, and invest in overland cable redundancy across Central Asia. These are not speculative ambitions—funding proposals and Memoranda of Understanding emerged within weeks of the incident, signaling a paradigm shift in how network reliability is pursued.

Tightening the Interface Between Ports and Packet Infrastructure

• Policy change needs traction. Port authorities and cable landing station operators currently operate under fragmented regulations. Coordinated frameworks across borders, especially in areas of cable confluence, will reduce collision frequency.
• Enforcement requires more than fines. Requiring AIS (Automatic Identification System) proximity alerts near undersea cable zones and automatic rerouting protocols during anchorage should no longer be voluntary codes.
• Co-investment in risk mapping. Integrating maritime traffic data with telecom infrastructure maps in real time will strengthen operational foresight. Private firms already offer this intelligence; state agencies must mandate its use.

Shared Ocean, Shared Responsibility

Commerce moves at scale across maritime routes—140,000 commercial vessels traverse those waters annually. Data moves quieter and deeper, but it relies on the same trenches. The challenge is not to isolate these systems but to engineer coexistence. Ships will sail, fiber will stretch—but alignment in design, regulation, and oversight will determine whether the next break disrupts minutes or months.