- Cloudflare tracked global internet outages from July to September in 125 countries
- Government-imposed blackouts remain one of the most common causes of global disruption
- Iraq, Syria and Sudan continued annual shutdowns during national exam periods.
Cloudflare's third-quarter Internet outage report paints an alarming picture of how fragile global connectivity remains, even in an era of advanced networking and sophisticated technology. DDoS protection.
Between July and September 2025, the company tracked outages caused by events ranging from natural disasters and cyberattacks to government restrictions and accidental cable damage.
Using data from its network spanning more than 330 cities in 125 countries, Cloudflare documented what it called “a wide range of known causes” underlying widespread service outages.
Government contracts remain one of the main culprits
Internet shutdowns imposed by government authorities remain one of the most common disruptions in the world.
Iraq, Syria and Sudan again closed online access during national exams, a practice that has become common in these regions.
Officials in Syria have even claimed success against “organized exam cheating networks,” suggesting such abuses are part of a broader enforcement strategy.
In a more unusual case, Venezuela saw ISP SuperCable go offline in mid-August after losing its license, cutting off connections for thousands of users.
Cloudflare described these cases as consistent with previous patterns of short, repeating and localized restrictions.
report shows how easily physical networks can fail accidentally or due to carelessness. A stray bullet in Texas damaged a fiber optic line, causing a two-hour outage for Spectrum customers.
In the Dominican Republic and Angola, construction damaged cables, disrupting communications for several hours.
Similar problems arose in Pakistan, Haiti and the United Arab Emirates, where a simultaneous cable outage in the Red Sea led to a halt in intercountry traffic.
Cloudflare's results show that no routing optimization or firewall management can compensate for deficiencies in physical infrastructure if it is damaged.
Natural and accidental disasters exacerbated the chaos in the neighborhood. In Egypt, a fire at the Ramses central telephone exchange knocked out major providers such as Vodafone and Orange.
A magnitude 8.8 earthquake on Russia's Kamchatka peninsula caused almost immediate disruption to regional transport traffic.
Even space services were affected. Starlink reported a global outage on July 24 following the “failure of key internal software services that operate the core network.”
Global internet access remains vulnerable to a range of threats, from cyber attacks to underlying infrastructure limitations. Outages can come from the most unexpected sources.
Cloudflare noted that its summary “is not an exhaustive or comprehensive list,” but the facts point to one clear reality: the global network can be huge and yet remain fragile.
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