Red Sea Cables

What it is

The Red Sea submarine cable corridor is the most critical single chokepoint in global internet infrastructure. More than 17 cable systems run through the narrow channel between the Arabian Peninsula and the Horn of Africa, carrying roughly 17 percent of global internet traffic and around 90 percent of Europe-to-Asia communications. The corridor narrows to approximately 26 km at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, where multiple systems run within meters of one another through relatively shallow water. Major cables include PEACE, AAE-1, SEA-ME-WE 4, IMEWE, FALCON GCX, the Europe India Gateway (EIG), SEACOM, and TGN. Operators span Telecom Egypt, Google, Meta, Saudi Telecom, Orange, China Mobile, and Vodafone, among others. Egypt occupies a pivotal position: its roughly 200 km terrestrial crossing links the Red Sea coast at Suez to the Mediterranean at Port Said, making it the most efficient east-west transit point on earth.

History

The Red Sea corridor developed across decades as fiber-optic cables replaced satellite as the intercontinental communications backbone. Egypt's state-controlled Telecom Egypt emerged as the central hub operator, controlling 13 or more active cable landings and the terrestrial transit infrastructure by the early 2020s. The corridor's fragility first drew broad attention in February 2008, when cuts near Alexandria disrupted traffic across three continents. In February 2024, Houthi militants sank the British bulk carrier MV Rubymar in the Red Sea; the vessel's dragging anchor severed four cables, SEACOM, TGN, AAE-1, and EIG, disrupting roughly 25 percent of Asia-Europe-Africa telecommunications. Approximately 100 million people across West and North Africa were affected, with Ghana, Liberia, and Cote d'Ivoire experiencing outages of seven to ten days.

Current state

As of July 2026, the corridor is under compound pressure. The PEACE cable was cut on March 4, 2025, roughly 1,450 km from Zafarana, Egypt, and severed again near the same area on June 25, 2026. A separate anchor-drag event at the Bab el-Mandeb on June 26, 2026 simultaneously cut SEA-ME-WE 4, IMEWE, FALCON GCX, and the Europe India Gateway, degrading connectivity across India, Pakistan, the Gulf, and parts of Africa. Repair timelines have stretched from weeks to months because a global shortage of cable-lay vessels reduces available ships, and Houthi threats and permitting difficulties make access to conflict-adjacent waters slow and risky. Meta's 2Africa cable, a 45,000 km next-generation system intended to add meaningful redundancy, has faced delays in the Red Sea segment for the same reasons.

Relationships

The corridor connects directly to the Hormuz digital chokepoint: cables exiting the Gulf run north into the Red Sea before transiting Egypt to the Mediterranean. The PEACE cable cuts of 2025 and 2026 illustrated how a single break can cascade, pushing re-routed traffic onto already-loaded systems and exposing how thin the spare capacity margin is. China Mobile and Huawei-linked entities control roughly a fifth of MENA's cable systems, including landings shared with US-aligned operators, adding a geopolitical layering on top of the physical vulnerability. Egypt's planned expansion from 14 to 21 active cable systems would diversify landing points while keeping Egypt as the undisputed central hub.

What to watch

• Whether repair vessels can secure safe-passage agreements to access the Bab el-Mandeb and restore the June 2026 multi-cable cuts before the vessel shortage prolongs outages further.
• Progress on Meta's 2Africa cable Red Sea segment, which would be the first meaningful capacity addition to the corridor since PEACE launched in 2024 and would reduce the concentration risk meaningfully.
• Whether Iran follows through on signals that it could charge tolls or disrupt cables under the Strait of Hormuz, compounding the Red Sea chokepoint into a single contested east-west corridor.
• Telecom Egypt's investment timeline: the company controls the most critical single node in global east-west internet transit, and any financing or political constraints on its upgrade plans affect the whole corridor.