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India's internet at risk as Hormuz, Red Sea subsea cables face wartime threats
India’s telecom, digital infrastructure rely on undersea cables near Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea; any disruption will impact internet speed, digital network, cloud service
- PUBLISHED: Wed 1 Apr 2026, 6:00 AM UPDATED: Wed 1 Apr 2026, 12:28 PM
[Editor's Note: Follow Khaleej Times live blog amid US-Israel-Iran war for the latest regional developments.]
There are growing concerns in India about the safety of subsea cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, with 60 per cent of India’s internet traffic being handled on the crucial link from Mumbai enroute to Europe.
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A disruption to these cables will impact internet speeds, digital networks and cloud service across the country. While Iran has not officially referred to the cables infrastructure in the war-affected region, there are fears relating to the undersea cables passing through the Red Sea.
There are 17 submarine cables passing through the Red Sea, carrying much of the data traffic between Asia, Europe and Africa. Analysts claim it would be difficult to disrupt all these cables, but there could be slowdowns if some are impacted. Most of the remaining 40 per cent of India’s internet traffic goes eastwards from Chennai to Singapore and the Pacific.
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Undertaking repairs and maintenance of existing subsea cables is also a challenge with the ongoing war in the Middle East. Even during normal times, it takes a lot of efforts to detect the undersea problems and fix them.
There are five cable systems linking India to different parts of the world from the west. They include AAE 1 (Asia-Africa-Europe 1), Falcon network, Tata TGN-Gulf, SEA-ME-WE (Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 4) and IMEWE (India-Middle East-Western Europe).
All of India’s leading telecom and digital infrastructure firms are exposed to undersea cables near the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. They include Reliance Jio Infocomm, Bharti Airtel, Tata Communications, and even Vodafone Idea.
Last year, three undersea cables linking India to global telecoms networks were severed after likely attacks, hitting 25 per cent of data traffic with Europe.
Anil Kumar Lahoti, chairman, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), had warned that subsea cable infrastructure fell short of the country’s digital ambitions. Addressing an International Subsea Cable Systems conference, the first held in India last year, he said India hosted just one per cent of the world’s subsea cable landing stations, in contrast to Singapore, for instance, which had 26 subsea cables landed across three sites.
Lahoti had called for a 10x expansion of India’s subsea cable infrastructure. Protecting underwater networks is a national security imperative, he pointed out.
The Indian government had told subsea cable operators and telecom firms to draw a risk analysis of the country’s exposure to its critical data pipelines that traverse several oceans including those in strife-torn regions.
Many in the telecom sector in India have also urged the government to discuss with Iran and avert threats to subsea infrastructure passing through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.
