More than a dozen fiber optic cables that pass through the Red Sea carrying 90 percent of all Europe-Asia data traffic may be in danger as the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have launched more than 40 attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, according to Data Centre Dynamics Ltd. As a result, subsea cable companies are looking to avoid the Red Sea in the future.
On February 24, three different cables in the Red Sea were reported to have suffered faults, according to TeleGeography, a telecom analyst, including Asia Africa Europe-1, Europe India Gateway, and SEACOM/Tata TGN-Eurasia. There is plenty of redundancy to the lost fiber capacity, but the conflict still represents a danger, the firm said.
“Houthi attacks on surface ships do present real challenges to the undersea cable industry,” TeleGeography opined in a blog. “Vessels that are sinking or sunken present new underwater hazards to cables and cable ships. Also, shipping attacks have caused marine insurance rates to spike.”
Two undersea cables currently being deployed, Google’s Blue-Raman cable and Grid Telecom/Tamares Telecom’s Andromeda cable, may rethink their current plans to use the Red Sea, according to Data Centre Dynamics.
“There are currently 13 cables passing through the Bab-Al-Mandeb Strait (at the mouth of Red Sea), which is suffering from the war in Yemen and five more yet-to-be-installed and contracted cables waiting for the war to get over,” wrote Sunil Tagare, Founder CEO of OpenCables.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies said that the Red Sea cable cut “reveals the soft underbelly of the global economy.” The think tank also mentioned damage to internet cables near Svalbard and the Shetland Islands that were cut in 2022 and the two subsea cables that were cut when a Chinese-owned commercial ship dragged its anchor across them in 2023.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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