Cloudflare's Q3 report: power outages and exam shutdowns drove most internet disruptions

Cloudflare's quarterly Internet disruption summary says it recorded 49 disruptions worldwide between July and September 2026. Government-directed shutdowns were the most common cause at 19 incidents, 18 of them scheduled exam-related shutdowns in Iraq that ran on a strict daily window and lasted 15 to 90 minutes each. Power outages followed with 14 incidents across 10 countries, and natural disasters caused five.

Cuba saw four separate power-related outages over the quarter, with traffic drops ranging from 18% to 59%. A power failure at a single interconnection facility in Honduras on September 10 knocked out connectivity for at least 11 major providers, cutting national HTTP traffic by 63% for about three hours. In Ukraine, a power outage in Sevastopol caused traffic to drop 98% for eight hours in July, and drone strikes on energy infrastructure in August caused a ten-hour, 95% drop. A cooling system failure at a Phoenix, Arizona data center also caused a near-total traffic drop for hosting provider Namecheap.

Natural disasters included Super Typhoon Bavi hitting Guam, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake in Colombia causing a four-and-a-half-day disruption, and flash floods in Nepal. A 10-day government shutdown in Ethiopia's Tigray region during renewed conflict there cut traffic by up to 30% at the country level and fully severed it locally. Cloudflare notes 14 of the quarter's disruptions resolved in under an hour and 16 in under three hours, but says even brief outages can have real consequences during emergencies.

Why it matters

The report is a reminder that internet access for huge populations still depends heavily on fragile power grids and government policy, not just network engineering.

Source: Cloudflare