A major internet disruption occurred after multiple undersea fiber-optic cables in the Red Sea were cut near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a vital corridor linking Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The damaged cables include SMW4 (operated by Tata Communications), IMEWE (a consortium system), and Falcon GCX, all of which carry huge volumes of international internet traffic. The outage caused slowdowns, high latency, and intermittent connectivity across large parts of the Middle East, South Asia—notably India and Pakistan—and parts of Europe. In the UAE, subscribers of Etisalat (e&) and Du reported degraded service, while in India and Pakistan, rerouting through alternative cables helped mitigate the crisis but did not fully resolve issues. Microsoft Azure cloud services confirmed disruption, particularly for traffic routed through the Middle East, though resilience measures and rerouting reduced the global impact. Monitoring groups such as NetBlocks tracked widespread performance drops, and users of various platforms reported slower browsing, video streaming, and cloud-based services. The cause of the damage is still unclear: some experts believe it may have been accidental, caused by ship anchors or seabed activity, while others suspect possible sabotage amid rising tensions in the Red Sea, where Yemen’s Houthi rebels have previously targeted infrastructure, although the group has denied involvement. Repairing subsea cables is a complex and time-intensive process requiring specialized ships and permits, and because of the volatile political situation in the region, experts warn that it may take weeks or even months before full connectivity is restored. Until then, ISPs and cloud providers are relying on rerouting strategies and backup systems to keep services running, but users in affected regions should expect continued slow speeds, congestion, and occasional outages.