In January-February 2008, multiple submarine cable cuts occured in the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean regions. The cable cuts caused internet disruptions and slowdowns, affecting at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, six million in Egypt and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia. The cable cuts  called into doubt the safety of the undersea portion of the Internet cable system.

On December 19, 2008, Friday, SEA-ME-WE 3 (SMW3), SEA-ME-WE 4(SMW4) and FLAG FEA undersea cable cuts occured at 7:28 a.m., 7:33 a.m. and 8:06 a.m. respectively.  The undersea cables were cut in the region where they run under the sea between Egypt and Italy. Seabone also went out Thursday evening in the same region. The undersea cables carry an estimated 90 percent of all data traffic between Europe and the Middle East.

2011 March 11 05:46:23 UTC, A magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck off the northeastern coast of Japan (modified to magnitude 9.0 later), at 38.322°N, 142.369°E and 373 km (231 miles) NE of TOKYO. The earthquake and its aftershocks and the tsunami resulted in multiple submarine cable cuts that threatening much of the intra-Asia and trans-Pacific telecommunications.

In a recent bid in Jan 2011 for IRU and Managed Hosting services, 10G IRU price for 15-year term over China-US submarine cable route went down to US$ 2.0 million.

SubCom (formerly Tyco Telecom) announced on 14 January 2011 that it has been contracted to provide the first 40G upgrade in a trans-Pacific submarine cable system more than 9,500km in length. The use of SubCom’s next-generation G4 SLTE enables the increase of cross sectional capacity by 100% to 1.92Tbps per fiber pair, a new record for trans-Pacific distance.

China Unicom Chairman, Mr. CHANG Xiaobing, visited Taiwan and signed on January 13, 2010 the Construction and Maintenance Agreement for Taiwan Strait Express-1 (TSE-1), for the construction of the first communication system directly linking Taiwan and Mainland China.