London
CNN
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Damage to undersea cables in the Red Sea has disrupted global telecommunications networks, forcing internet providers to reroute as much as a quarter of their traffic between Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
Cables belonging to four major telecommunications networks have been “cut”, causing “significant” disruption to telecommunications networks in the Middle East, Hong Kong-based telecommunications company HGC Global Communications said.
HGC said in a statement on Monday that it estimates 25% of traffic between Asia and Europe and the Middle East is affected.
The company said it would reroute traffic to minimize disruption to customers and “extend assistance to affected businesses.”
HGC did not say how the cable was damaged or who was responsible.
Undersea cables are the invisible force that drives the internet, and in recent years many of them have been funded by internet giants like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook’s parent company Meta. Damage to these undersea networks can cause widespread internet outages, as occurred after the 2006 Taiwan earthquake.
The destruction of the Red Sea cable came weeks after Yemen’s official government warned that Houthi rebels could target the cable.Iranian-backed armed groups It has already disrupted global supply chains by attacking commercial ships in vital waterways.
A report in Israeli news outlet Globes last week suggested that the Houthis were behind the damage to the cable.Yemeni rebel leader Abdel Malek al-Houthi He denied the charges. “We have no intention of targeting the undersea cables that provide internet to countries in the region,” he said.
The Yemeni government has since blamed the UK and US The country’s state news agency reported on Saturday that military units were operating in the affected areas. CNN has reached out to the British and American governments for comment, but the Yemeni government could not immediately be reached.
In a statement last week, the Yemeni government stressed the importance of undersea cable protection and said it was “also committed to providing all necessary facilities for the repair and maintenance of undersea cables.”
Among the networks affected is Asia-Africa-Europe 1, a 25,000-kilometer (15,534-mile) cable system that connects Southeast Asia and Europe via Egypt. The European India Gateway (EIG) was also affected.
EIG connects Europe, the Middle East and India and counts Vodafone as a major investor. Vodafone, Britain’s leading mobile phone network operator, declined to comment.
The company says on its website that it can send Internet traffic to 100 countries via about 80 undersea cable systems.
Most major carriers rely on multiple undersea cable systems to reroute traffic in the event of a failure to ensure uninterrupted service.
Wayne Cheung in Taipei, Celine Alkhardi in Abu Dhabi, Alex Stambaugh in Hong Kong and Deeksha Madhok in New Delhi contributed reporting.
