Despite Red Sea undersea cable disruptions not expected to slow UAE internet speeds, officials caution that underlying structural and security vulnerabilities could still create potential risks for future overall connectivity.
Red Sea cable disruptions ‘won’t slow down UAE internet, though concerns persist’.
“Although the nation is supported by a broad network of alternative pathways and a well-developed internal telecommunications backbone, experts caution that its stability is not guaranteed. The recent damage to cables near the Jeddah coastline served as a clear reminder of how quickly weaknesses can emerge when a major segment of this busy transmission corridor is compromised. The incident demonstrated that even countries with strong infrastructure can face sudden pressure if multiple systems are disrupted at once, highlighting the importance of continuous investment, monitoring, and contingency planning to maintain long-term connectivity security.”
“Reports from Bloomberg indicate that several major subsea fibre-optic routes planned to pass through the Red Sea are still far from completion, largely because the region remains highly sensitive from both a political and security standpoint. Ongoing instability, maritime tensions, and the broader geopolitical climate have created an environment in which construction teams and operators cannot always move forward as scheduled. One of the most affected initiatives is the 2Africa cable network, a massive global project spearheaded by Meta and a consortium of international partners. Although designed to become one of the world’s largest and most influential intercontinental cable systems, a substantial section of its Red Sea segment has yet to be finalised. Industry analysts attribute the delays to a complex mix of issues, including practical challenges related to deploying equipment in a high-risk area, regulatory hurdles imposed by various jurisdictions, and the heightened geopolitical pressures that shape decision-making in this strategic maritime corridor. These obstacles have collectively slowed progress and underscored how vulnerable essential digital infrastructure can be when positioned in regions marked by conflict or uncertainty. As a result, stakeholders remain cautious, recognising that further setbacks are possible until stability improves.”
“When major high-bandwidth cable projects are delayed or pushed further down the timeline, the additional capacity they were expected to provide never becomes available at the moment it is most needed. This means the region loses the technological buffer that would normally help manage sudden outages, traffic surges, or unexpected failures in existing systems. Without that built-in margin for growth and emergency rerouting, any new disruption has a greater chance of straining the remaining infrastructure. As incidents in the corridor persist, the absence of these planned upgrades ultimately increases the vulnerability of the entire regional connectivity network.”
“A growing sense of strain surrounds the Red Sea telecommunications corridor, which has faced multiple interruptions over the past two years. Industry analysts explain that every new setback piles additional stress onto what is already considered one of the most delicate passageways for global internet traffic. Tony O’Sullivan, the chief executive of RETN, emphasised that this stretch of seabed has become an unmistakable weak point in the international network that links Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
According to O’Sullivan, the events of early 2024 clearly revealed how severe the consequences can be when fibre links in the area are damaged. He noted that the cable cuts recorded at that time temporarily disrupted up to 70 percent of the data exchanged between Europe and Asia—far more than experts had projected. The scale of the slowdown, he explained, served as a wake-up call for operators across the region. Now, with further disturbances emerging less than two years after that incident, O’Sullivan believes the same structural weaknesses are resurfacing, suggesting that the lessons from the previous crisis have not yet been fully addressed.
He acknowledged that the UAE has demonstrated stronger resilience than several of its neighbours, largely because the country relies on a broad collection of subsea links complemented by land-based routes that provide multiple fallback options. This diversity allowed the Emirates to absorb recent incidents with fewer noticeable effects compared to other regional markets. However, O’Sullivan also stressed that even with these advantages, the wider Gulf region still lacks enough robust, high-capacity alternatives to compensate for prolonged outages in the Red Sea. In his view, delays to cable expansions and continuous disruptions inevitably undermine regional stability. The UAE, he added, feels these vulnerabilities quickly because of its role as a major digital and commercial hub.”
“Why the UAE’s connectivity came under strain”
“Only a short time ago, four undersea systems near Jeddah were severed, and the consequences were felt almost instantly in the UAE,” he explained. When those links went down, the country’s digital traffic had to be rerouted, but the remaining land-based pathways were never designed to handle that level of demand. As a result, capacity quickly tightened and operators were forced to shift data onto far longer global routes, increasing latency and reducing overall performance. What appeared to be a single regional incident rapidly turned into a wider connectivity challenge simply because there was not enough spare bandwidth available on the alternative routes.
He noted that these problems are magnified whenever new cable projects fail to move forward as scheduled. “Delays in rolling out additional high-capacity systems essentially eliminate the cushion that operators were counting on. The extra bandwidth those new lines would have supplied was meant to act as insurance during moments of crisis,” he said. Without those upgrades coming online, the regional network loses its safety margin, making every fault more disruptive than it needs to be.
He emphasised that each time a subsea cut occurs, the weaknesses become impossible to ignore. The strain on remaining systems is immediate, and the difficulty of rerouting large volumes of international traffic exposes how dependent the region is on timely infrastructure expansion. “Whenever repairs take weeks or months—as is often the case with deep-sea cable damage—the lack of fresh capacity becomes even more serious,” he added.
According to him, the UAE and neighbouring countries will continue to face repeated instability unless new systems are deployed on schedule. Without diversified, modern, high-bandwidth paths entering service, the region remains vulnerable to recurring outages, long restoration timelines, and bottlenecks that have global ripple effects.
“O’Sullivan pointed out that telecom operators need to rethink the way they approach network stability and emergency planning. According to him, it is no longer enough to simply list alternative routes on a contingency diagram or rely on theoretical backup paths. What the region truly requires is substantial, real-world surplus capacity across completely separate routes—capacity that can shoulder the full weight of traffic for extended periods when something goes wrong. He stressed that redundancy must be measurable and practical, not symbolic, and that operators should assume that a cable break could take months, not weeks, to repair.”
He explained that repair timelines have changed dramatically compared to previous years. Weather challenges, geopolitical restrictions, and limited access for repair vessels all contribute to drawn-out restoration efforts. “In many recent cases, the repair window isn’t a matter of weeks. It stretches into six to nine months, sometimes even longer,” he said. This shift, he argued, means the old model of resilience—designed for relatively short outages—no longer matches real-world conditions. Companies must therefore adjust their planning assumptions to ensure they can operate normally even during prolonged disruptions.
Digital-infrastructure specialists warn that the consequences of these prolonged delays extend well beyond basic telecommunications. They argue that the slowdown in subsea cable deployment—especially in a critical chokepoint like the Red Sea—has a ripple effect across industries that depend on high-speed, low-latency connectivity.
Vincent Chok, Founder and Chief Executive of First Digital Trust, highlighted the vulnerability of the global financial ecosystem. He explained that disruptions in physically vulnerable corridors can affect everything from cross-border payments to asset-management platforms and blockchain settlement systems. “The setbacks facing Red Sea cable projects expose a fundamental weakness,” Chok said. “No matter how sophisticated digital financial systems have become, their strength is ultimately determined by the reliability of the physical infrastructure underneath them.”
Chok explained that when the flow of information slows down, the impact spreads quickly across the financial ecosystem—an ecosystem that relies heavily on instant data transmission. He emphasised that it is not simply a matter of websites loading more slowly for everyday users. Instead, even small delays in network performance can create measurable lag in systems that require extremely precise timing. Real-time payment platforms, high-frequency trading engines, digital-asset exchanges, settlement networks and automated compliance tools all rely on rapid, uninterrupted data movement. When connectivity falters, each of these systems begins to experience latency, and that latency ultimately translates into operational risk, slower transaction finalisation, and increased exposure during volatile market moments.
According to Chok, the financial sector has become so deeply interconnected that a delay in one critical corridor can influence performance across continents. Modern finance, he noted, functions as a web rather than a chain; a slowdown in a single node affects multiple institutions simultaneously. In competitive markets—whether traditional banking or digital-asset management—fractions of a second matter. For this reason, the stability of subsea cables is not just a technology issue but a strategic economic concern.
He also stressed that building resilience into networks can no longer be seen as an optional enhancement or a technical add-on. Instead, it must be treated as a core priority for global markets. Financial institutions, telecommunications companies, and regulators all need to recognise that fragile infrastructure poses systemic risk. If the physical backbone falters, the entire digital economy, including advanced financial services, becomes vulnerable. This makes redundancy, geographic diversity, and capacity buffers essential components of modern economic strategy.
Chok pointed out that the UAE has made meaningful progress in strengthening its digital foundations. He described the country’s approach as proactive, long-term, and conscious of regional vulnerabilities. Unlike regions that rely heavily on a single cable landing point or one dominant international path, the UAE has spent years building diversified routes—both subsea and terrestrial—that distribute risk across multiple systems. The Emirates have also crafted regulatory and innovation frameworks that encourage both fintech firms and traditional financial institutions to operate and test new models within the country. This combination of infrastructure investment and policy support has positioned the UAE as a resilient digital hub, capable of withstanding regional disruptions more effectively than many of its neighbours.
However, despite these advantages, experts caution that the situation in the Red Sea still presents challenges that no single country can fully mitigate on its own. The prolonged delays to new subsea cable systems mean that the additional capacity required to protect regional connectivity is not yet available. The Red Sea, which already functions as one of the busiest and most strategically important telecommunication corridors in the world, continues to experience repeated disturbances. Each new incident highlights the limited number of alternative pathways that can absorb traffic when cable breaks occur.
As disruptions persist, specialists argue that continued investment in multiple, truly independent routes will become increasingly important—not only for the UAE, but for the Gulf and wider Middle East. The long-term health of regional connectivity hinges on expanding bandwidth, reducing dependence on a single chokepoint, and ensuring that correction cycles do not leave operators exposed for months at a time.
For now, the UAE is unlikely to face immediate slowdowns due to the buffers it has already built. Yet, the overall resilience of the region depends on future cable systems being completed on schedule and on countries working together to diversify their digital pathways. Without ongoing expansion and updated strategic planning, the vulnerabilities observed in recent Red Sea incidents will remain a recurring threat—one that affects both everyday consumers and the global financial systems that rely on seamless, high-speed connectivity.
