Microsoft said Saturday that clients of its Azure cloud platform might experience increased latency after multiple undersea cables were cut in the Red Sea, as reported in Bloomberg.
In a status update, the company said traffic going through the Middle East or ending in Asia or Europe had been affected. It did not say who had cut the cables or why.
“Undersea fiber cuts can take time to repair, as such we will continuously monitor, rebalance, and optimize routing to reduce customer impact in the meantime,” the status update said.
By Saturday evening, Microsoft said it was no longer detecting any Azure issues. But it seems Azure was not the only service affected, with NetBlocks reporting that “a series of subsea cable outages in the Red Sea has degraded internet connectivity in multiple countries” including India and Pakistan.
According to the Associated Press, Yemen’s Houthi rebels had previously denied attacking cables as part of a Red Sea campaign to pressure Israel.
This post has been updated with additional context about affected countries and Houthi denials.