How Undersea Cable Cuts are Making Global Business Increasingly Risky

Is network resiliency able to reach beyond five nines and SLAs for enterprises seeking always-on services?

Given recent headlines and discussion in the wake of undersea cable cuts in the Red Sea, the answer is still no for multinationals. The situation is best described as business interruption as usual.

On Saturday, February 24, three different cables were reported to have suffered faults:

These international systems connect far-apart states like South Africa, the United Kingdom, and China. The faults off the coast of Yemen need to be repaired. The work is tough to do in a narrow, heavily traveled shipping lane that doubles as a war zone with a concentration of submarine cables on the sea floor.

Fighting in the Middle East is a concern as enterprises and the telecom industry rely on undersea cables to carry the bulk of their intercontinental traffic.

Since late February, three more faults in the region have been reported, according to TeleGeography, a research firm that builds and maintains massive data sets that are used to monitor, forecast, and map the telecommunications industry. One report has a ship dragging an anchor as the culprit, which the firm claims is the second most frequent cause behind cuts/faults of these business and communications lifelines.

Related:Houthi-Sunk Ship Seen as Likely Cause of Severed Red Sea Cables

Fighting in the Middle East is a concern as enterprises and the telecom industry rely on undersea cables to carry the bulk of their intercontinental traffic.

Read the rest of this article in Network Computing