- Undersea cables through the Red Sea carry a large part of India's internet traffic to Europe
- Seventeen submarine cables pass through the Red Sea connecting Asia, Europe, and Africa
- Disruption of these cables could slow internet and cloud services across India
Undersea cables through the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz carry a large part of India's internet traffic and any disruption could slow down services such as banking, cloud platforms and other online networks. Although Iran has not made any official threats against the undersea communication cables, multiple X (formerly Twitter) accounts have raised concerns that they could be targeted.
“As the war drags into week three, Iran's choke point isn't just oil, it's the internet running under it. The Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea carry cables powering banking, AI, and basically your entire online life… and they're now sitting in a live fire zone. Why this matters: you don't need to blow up cities to cause chaos, just slow the data, and everything else follows. Because if those cables go down, it's not just a regional problem,” Lebanese-Australian entrepreneur Mario Nawfal wrote on X.
What Are Undersea Cables And How Are They Laid?
Undersea, or submarine, cables are fibre optic lines laid on the ocean floor to carry global data. They connect cable landing stations (CLS) on land across continents. Specially designed cable-laying ships unwind thousands of tons of cable along a planned route. In shallow waters, a trenching device places the cable into a trench to protect it from ship anchors or fishing trawls. In deeper areas, the cable simply rests on the seabed.
Implications For India
According to Khaleej Times, nearly 60 per cent of India's internet traffic to Europe passes through the Mumbai route across the Red Sea. A disruption here could slow internet speeds that will affect digital networks, and hamper cloud-based services across the country. The remaining 40 per cent of traffic flows east from Chennai to Singapore and the Pacific.
Seventeen submarine cables currently traverse the Red Sea that carry much of the data between Asia, Europe and Africa.
India's westward connections rely on five major cable systems:
- AAE-1 (Asia-Africa-Europe 1)
- Falcon Network
- Tata TGN-Gulf
- SEA-ME-WE 4 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4)
- IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe)
Leading Indian telecom and digital firms such as Reliance Jio Infocomm, Bharti Airtel, Tata Communications and Vodafone Idea are all dependent on these undersea links near the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.
The report mentioned that many Indian telecom companies have urged the government to engage with Iran and prevent any threats to subsea infrastructure passing through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.
Last year, attacks severed three undersea cables linking India to global telecom networks, disrupting 25% of data traffic to Europe.
