UAE telecoms companies Du and Etisalat inundated with customer queries as service slows

Customers of the UAE telecoms companies Du and Etisalat reported major internet slowdowns this weekend, with home broadband services lagging and many websites and apps failing to load.

Internet trackers showed a sharp rise in complaints on Saturday, as frustrated users took to social media to report the disruptions.

Microsoft confirmed that multiple undersea cable outages in the Red Sea had caused degraded internet connectivity across the Middle East, including in the UAE. The company said its Azure cloud services were affected but were being rerouted.

“Undersea fibre cuts can take time to repair, as such we will continuously monitor, rebalance, and optimise routing to reduce customer impact in the meantime,” Microsoft said in a statement.

The internet observatory NetBlocks said the disruption was linked to failures affecting the SMW4 and IMEWE subsea cable systems near Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The issue has also impacted countries such as Pakistan and India.

On social media platform X, UAE users complained of delays reaching up to 16,000 ms, making even basic browsing and messaging difficult.

While Du and Etisalat did not issue official statements explaining the cause, both operators’ help desk teams were flooded with requests and responded to customers online with troubleshooting offers.

The Red Sea is a critical route for international telecommunications, connecting Europe with Africa and Asia through Egypt. Repair operations in the area are particularly challenging amid ongoing Houthi rebel attacks on vessels, which complicate access for repair ships.

For now, engineers are working to reroute connections, but users may continue to face intermittent slowdowns until full repairs are completed.