Cloudflare records 49 global internet disruptions in Q3

Cloudflare has published its third-quarter 2026 report on global internet disruptions, recording 49 incidents during the period.

The data points to power failures, government-ordered shutdowns, natural disasters and conflict as the main causes of outages between July and September. Government-directed shutdowns accounted for 19 incidents, power outages 14 and natural disasters five.

One of the clearest patterns was the dependence of internet access on electricity supply. Power-related disruptions were recorded across 10 countries, with Cuba alone experiencing four outages linked to grid failures.

In Honduras, a power failure at an interconnection facility affected at least 11 major providers and cut national HTTP traffic by 63% for about three hours. The incident highlighted how concentrated exchange infrastructure can become a single point of failure.

Ukraine also featured in the quarter's disruption data. In Sevastopol, a power outage caused an eight-hour blackout in July, with HTTP traffic dropping by 98%. In August, drone strikes on energy infrastructure led to another internet disruption that lasted about 10 hours and reduced traffic by as much as 95%.

Cloudflare also noted a near-total drop in traffic from Namecheap after a cooling system failure at a data centre in Phoenix. Such outages show that even networks in markets with a strong record of resilience remain exposed to failures in physical infrastructure.

Exam shutdowns

Government-directed shutdowns were the largest category overall, driven mainly by Iraq. The country accounted for 18 of the 19 incidents recorded during the quarter, with each timed to coincide with national exams.

These shutdowns followed a strict schedule and lasted between 15 and 90 minutes. Most took place from late August to late September, with several others in early July.

The practice has become a recurring feature of the country's exam periods. Cloudflare noted that Syria and Sudan, which have also imposed exam-related internet shutdowns in recent years, did not record similar disruptions during the quarter.

Conflict and disasters

Conflict-related disruption was most severe in Ethiopia's Tigray region, where renewed fighting coincided with a 10-day internet shutdown. Traffic in the region fell by 100%, while country-level HTTP traffic declined by as much as 30%.

The report also highlighted the effect of natural disasters on internet access. In Guam, Super Typhoon Bavi caused widespread power outages and transmission line damage, resulting in another major connectivity disruption only months after Super Typhoon Sinlaku hit the territory.

Elsewhere, an earthquake in Colombia caused a four-and-a-half-day disruption after damaging fibre infrastructure, while flash floods in Nepal led to a two-hour regional outage and an 18% drop in HTTP traffic. In Japan, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake prompted evacuation orders and disrupted desktop internet traffic, though mobile traffic was largely unaffected.

Broader resilience

The quarter's incidents also included outages within individual networks rather than across whole countries. These included One Communications in Guyana after a cable cut, MEO in Portugal following a reported "mass attack", Digicel Haiti, TurkNet in Turkey and Fanap Telecom in Iran.

The events showed both fragility and resilience in internet infrastructure. Fourteen disruptions returned to typical traffic levels in under an hour, and 16 recovered in less than three hours.

The figures suggest that while many incidents are brief, their effect can still be significant when they occur during storms, earthquakes, armed conflict or political unrest. In such conditions, internet access can be directly tied to communication, safety and access to information.

Cloudflare said its network spans more than 330 cities in over 125 countries and carries more than 20% of web traffic, giving it a broad view of how outages affect internet activity around the world. Its quarter-by-quarter tracking increasingly shows that connectivity depends not only on telecoms networks, but also on power systems, physical security and state policy.