By B Izzak
KUWAIT: Kuwait was not affected by cuts in an undersea cable in the Red Sea providing Internet to Asia and the Middle East as the service was immediately transferred to a backup cable, the communications authority said on Sunday. Service was disrupted in parts of Asia and the Middle East following the cuts in the Red Sea cable as the owner company rushed to repair the damage.
Kuwait’s Communication and Information Technology Regulatory Authority (CITRA) said in a statement on Sunday that it was informed of the cuts in a cable to GCX Falcon at 4 pm, with the cuts affecting three international circuits. It added that technical teams immediately began coordinating with Kuwait station management and traffic was diverted to a backup cable. The diversion process was completed four hours later, with service restored to all affected circuits without any further impact in Kuwait, CITRA said.
Global tech giant Microsoft on Sunday said network traffic for its Azure cloud computing platform was experiencing increased delays in parts of the Middle East due to the undersea fiber cuts in the Red Sea. Microsoft noted its network had been affected since Saturday. “Network traffic that does not traverse through the Middle East is not impacted,” the company said in a statement.
The Internet access monitoring organization NetBlocks noted that a series of submarine cable outages in the Red Sea has degraded Internet connectivity in several countries, including in India and Pakistan. Global Internet and telecom cables have followed shipping routes through the Red Sea, but there has been growing anxiety about the state of the lines after Yemen’s Houthi rebels began attacking passing merchant vessels in late 2023 in solidarity with the Palestinians amid the Gaza war.
The laying and operation of underwater cables have long been the preserve of a consortium of large telecoms operators, but Internet giants have largely taken over in recent years as they strive to keep up with ballooning flows of data. About 1.4 million km of fiber optic cables are laid on the ocean floor, enabling the provision of essential services such as trade, financial transactions, public services, digital health and education around the world.
Damage to submarine cables is not uncommon. According to the International Cable Protection Committee, there are an average of 150 to 200 outages per year worldwide, or around three incidents a week. Fishing and anchoring are believed to be responsible for a vast majority of recorded damage to the lines. Natural hazards to the cables also include ageing, abrasions and equipment failure.
