Microsoft Confirms Red Sea Undersea Cable Cut Causing Azure Latency

Microsoft has confirmed that cuts to undersea fiber cables in the Red Sea are causing increased network latency for Azure customers. The disruption, first reported on September 6, 2025, has affected traffic routed through the Middle East. While services remain operational, users in certain regions may experience slower connectivity.

What Happened in the Red Sea?

At 05:45 UTC on September 6, 2025, Microsoft Azure detected increased latency on network routes passing through the Middle East. According to Microsoft’s official status page, the issue was caused by undersea fiber cuts in the Red Sea, a critical global internet corridor that connects Europe, Asia, and Africa.

The Red Sea is home to some of the world’s busiest subsea internet cables, carrying data between continents. Any damage to these cables has ripple effects across global connectivity.

Impact on Microsoft Azure Services

Rerouting to Minimize Disruption

Microsoft stated that no services were completely interrupted. Instead, traffic has been rerouted through alternate network paths. However, this workaround introduces higher latency for some users, especially those whose traffic previously relied on Middle East routes.

Who Is Affected?

• Regions impacted: Primarily customers in Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia who rely on Red Sea cable pathways.
• Services affected: General Azure cloud services, including storage, virtual machines, and hosted applications, may experience delays in data transfer.
• Unaffected regions: Customers whose network traffic does not traverse the Middle East remain unaffected.

Global Context of Cable Disruptions

This is not the first time subsea infrastructure in the Red Sea has been impacted. Earlier incidents, including suspected anchor damage and geopolitical tensions in the region, have repeatedly threatened the stability of these critical undersea links.

Industry experts note that the Red Sea subsea cable route carries nearly 17% of the world’s internet traffic, making it one of the most strategically important digital chokepoints globally.

Microsoft’s Response

Daily Updates and Monitoring

Microsoft has committed to providing daily updates until the situation stabilizes. As of 22:33 UTC on September 6, the company confirmed that rerouting efforts are in place and no Azure services are fully down.

Long-Term Implications

While rerouting prevents outages, latency may persist until the damaged cables are physically repaired, a process that can take several weeks depending on the severity of the cut and the availability of repair ships.

Why This Matters

1. Business Continuity: Enterprises relying on Azure for mission-critical applications may experience slower performance, which could affect productivity and user experience.
2. Cloud Reliability: The incident highlights the vulnerability of cloud services to physical infrastructure challenges.
3. Strategic Infrastructure Risk: Subsea cables remain the backbone of the global internet, and damage in chokepoints like the Red Sea underscores their geopolitical and economic importance.

The Red Sea undersea fiber cable cuts have created latency challenges for Microsoft Azure users across affected regions. While Microsoft has successfully rerouted traffic to prevent full outages, higher latency may persist until repairs are completed. This event highlights both the resilience and vulnerability of global cloud networks, which rely heavily on subsea cables for uninterrupted connectivity.

Tags: Microsoft Azure, Red Sea cable cut, Azure latency, cloud outage, undersea fiber cable, internet infrastructure, subsea cables, Middle East network issue, global internet traffic, Azure September 2025 update