State of the Submarine Cables - August 2026
What our distributed measurement network saw in August 2026: every number below comes from our own probes and detectors, and every incident links to its measured timeline.
The month in numbers
- 441 716 latency measurements
- 556 routes observed
- 18 anomalies detected (4 critical, all investigated and closed)
- 14 cable systems involved
- 14.2 average hours to resolution
Notable incidents
A detected anomaly is not automatically a cable fault: some turn out to be inland routing changes or planned reroutes, and the incident pages say so explicitly.
| Cable | Detected | RTT vs baseline | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Malaysia-Cambodia-Thailand (MCT) Cable | 2026-08-26 | 59 -> 142 ms | resolved - measured timeline |
| PEACE Cable | 2026-08-17 | 292 -> 3065 ms | resolved - measured timeline |
| Tonga Cable | 2026-08-21 | 35 -> 70 ms | resolved - measured timeline |
| Nigeria Cameroon Submarine Cable System (NCSCS) | 2026-08-05 | 20 -> 184 ms | resolved - measured timeline |
| Matrix Cable System | 2026-08-15 | 20 -> 49 ms | resolved - measured timeline |
Latency observatory
Slowest and fastest paths among routes with at least 200 measurements this month (average round-trip time).
Slowest observed paths
| Route | avg RTT, ms |
|---|---|
| Almaty - Tonga Comm Corp | 500 |
| Sevastopol - Tonga Comm Corp | 500 |
| Almaty - Telecom Cook Islands | 483 |
| Almaty - Samoa DataCom | 455 |
| Jerusalem - Telecom Cook Islands | 450 |
Fastest observed paths
| Route | avg RTT, ms |
|---|---|
| Almaty - RIPE Atlas Probe 7342 KG | 7 |
| Odessa UA - Cloudflare | 9 |
| Minsk - Cloudflare Mayotte | 10 |
| Minsk - Cloudflare Mogadishu | 10 |
| Minsk BY - Cloudflare | 10 |
Month-over-month shifts
Routes whose weighted median moved 15%+ against the previous month (at least 100 samples in both).
| Route | avg RTT, ms |
|---|---|
| Minsk - RIPE Atlas Probe 6723 MN | 141 -> 242 (+72%, slower) |
| Minsk - RIPE Atlas anchor#6402 | 102 -> 165 (+62%, slower) |
| Saint Petersburg RU - Cloudflare | 19 -> 29 (+53%, slower) |
| Saint Petersburg RU - Google DNS | 18 -> 27 (+50%, slower) |
| Moscow - Cloudflare Mogadishu | 26 -> 38 (+46%, slower) |
| Jerusalem - RIPE Atlas anchor#6380 | 312 -> 173 (-45%, faster) |
Method and reuse
Measurements come from GeoCables own distributed probe network; anomaly detection compares live paths against per-route rolling baselines. Reuse freely under CC BY 4.0 with attribution: raw data in the open dataset, programmatic access via the API, push updates via RSS. Live view: the map.
