2LT International News

LONDON, U.K.: Internet access across Asia and the Middle East faced widespread disruption after damage to subsea cables in the Red Sea, according to monitoring groups and companies that rely on the links.

Internet watchdog Netblocks said the outages affected multiple countries, including India and Pakistan. Users in the United Arab Emirates also experienced disruptions on Etisalat and Du networks.

Netblocks said the problems were traced to cable failures near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It was not immediately clear who or what caused the damage.

Microsoft confirmed the incident, saying the cuts had affected its Azure cloud platform — the world’s second-largest after Amazon Web Services.

“Azure users may experience service disruptions on traffic routes through the Middle East,” the company said, noting it had rerouted traffic through alternative network paths.

While the rerouting has kept services online, Microsoft acknowledged that “higher latency” could affect users whose data previously traveled through the Middle East. Traffic not passing through the region remains unaffected, the company added.