Red Sea cable disruption: Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia says India’s systems ‘not critically impacted’

Dubai: The recent series of subsea cable disruptions in the Red Sea have not “critically impacted” India’s system, Indian Union Minister of Communications Jyotiraditya M Scindia told UAE media on the sidelines of the Universal Postal Congress Dubai 2025.

Scindia said that while such outages can occur, India’s robust network infrastructure has provided a buffer against the widespread slowdowns reported across the region, including the UAE.

Scindia, who is also the Minister of Development of North-Eastern Region, said, “Let me say this, that within India, our systems are up and running,” Scindia stated, while acknowledging that there can be a myriad of causes for cable damage.

He added that such incidents often occur closer to the shore and highlighted the deployment of repair ships and the use of private sector services to address these issues.

“We have deployed technology in terms of ships and repair ships across all those regions. This is also a service provided by many private sector people, and I do not believe that it is an impairment that will critically damage at this point in time. There’s been no such incident till now, but yes, there are outages that happen from time to time,” he added.

The minister’s comments come as internet users in the UAE and other parts of the Middle East and South Asia have reported degraded connectivity.

According to a global internet observatory, the outages are attributed to failures affecting the SEA-ME-WE 4 (SMW4) and India-Middle East-Western Europe (IMEWE) cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, causing increased latency and slower speeds.

According to telecom research company TeleGeography, the Red Sea corridor carries about 17 per cent of global internet traffic between Asia, Europe and Africa, making it one of the world’s most critical digital chokepoints.

While major telecom providers in the UAE, including e& and du, have acknowledged the disruption and assured customers that technical teams are working on a resolution, reasons for what is causing the outage is yet to be revealed.

The affected SMW4 cable is operated by a consortium that includes Tata Communications, a key player in India's telecom sector. The disruption has reignited discussions about the vulnerability of global digital infrastructure in a geopolitically volatile region. When asked what could've caused the outage, Scindia said there could be a 'myriad' of reasons.

Commenting on India’s participation at the Universal Postal Congress Dubai 2025, Scindia spoke about the transformation of India Post into a logistics organisation, leveraging its extensive reach and public trust, while modernising its operations with technology and a new business plan to appeal to a younger generation of users.

He added, “We are intending to sign a number of Letters of Intents based on our Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), which has been tremendously successful across the world, and to introduce the UPI platform to provide financial technology platforms.”

He said India is looking at signing letters of intent with Caribbean countries, the Latin American countries, the Americas, and African countries, “predominantly on this UPI technology platform and to be able to take it to other countries on a bilateral basis.”

UPI is India's real-time, instant payment system that allows you to send money between bank accounts using a mobile device.