Another Internet cable damaged in the Red Sea – it will take months to repair the damaged Peace system

The Peace underwater internet cable has broken in the Red Sea. Submarine Cable Networks was the first to report the incident, which occurred approximately 1,450 km off the Egyptian coast. The exact cause of the break has not yet been announced, but the Red Sea has recently become an extremely unfavorable environment for cables. The Peace cable system, which is 25,000 km long, connects 13 countries: Egypt, Cyprus, Kenya, the Maldives, Malta, the UAE, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Seychelles, Singapore, Somalia, Tunisia and France.

The waters and coastline near Yemen have been unsafe for passing ships since November 2023. According to experts, abandoned and damaged ships are the main cause of underwater cable breaks. A year ago, three cables were damaged by the dragging anchor of the bulk carrier Rubymar, which had previously been attacked by missiles.

According to Datacenter Dynamics, the repairs will likely take several months due to a shortage of specialized vessels for repairing and laying submarine cables. Although several new vessels of this type have been commissioned in the last 18 months, the shortage is still very large, which has delayed many projects and forced some fiber-optic routes to be changed.

Image source: PEACE Cable International Network

The first segments of Peace were launched in 2022. The cable was manufactured by Huawei. Peace is owned and operated by Hong Kong-based telecom PCCW Global, but individual parts are owned by partners. Cyta owns a division in Cyprus, GO in Malta, Ooredoo in Tunisia, and Zain in Jeddah. Du owns a branch to the UAE, but this segment will be finally completed in 2026. Peace’s throughput is up to 96 Tbps on the Pakistan-Egypt section and 192 Tbps in the Mediterranean. The capacity of the branch to Singapore is not specified.

There have been several significant cable breaks recently, but mostly in the Baltic Sea area. First two internet cables were broken, then four internet cables and one power cable, then another and another. Germany sent an underwater drone to patrol the Baltic, and Sweden sent three ships and an airplane.

Last October, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) formed the International Advisory Body on Submarine Cable Resilience, which held a summit on submarine cable security in Nigeria in late February 2025. The summit adopted a framework declaration to encourage joint support for critical information infrastructure.