Q3 2026 in numbers

Cloudflare Radar annotated 49 Internet disruptions between July and September 2026, observing their effects through traffic to Cloudflare customers on a network that carries more than 20% of the web's traffic. Government-directed shutdowns made up 19 incidents, 18 of them exam-related shutdowns in Iraq. Power outages were close behind with 14 incidents, and natural disasters accounted for five.

The quarter was shaped less by any single failure mode than by the systems the Internet rests on: electricity grids, physical infrastructure, and policy decisions. Outages in the United States, Japan, and Portugal showed that countries with a strong record of resilience are not immune.

Grid failures and the networks that depend on them

Radar counted 14 power-related disruptions across 10 countries. The category was second only to government-directed exam shutdowns by incident count.

Cuba saw four grid-related outages — July 6, July 14, August 3, and a three-day blackout from September 18 to 20 — with traffic declines ranging from 18% on July 14 to 59% on August 3. In Honduras, a power failure at an interconnection facility on September 10 took out at least 11 major providers for roughly three hours, during which national HTTP traffic fell by 63%. Two carriers escaped: cross-border provider Telecomunicaciones de Guatemala (AS14754) and mobile operator Celtel (AS52262), suggesting their Honduran connectivity leans on infrastructure outside the country.

Conflict and energy infrastructure proved tightly coupled in Ukraine. A power outage in Sevastopol on July 5 produced an eight-hour blackout and a 98% drop in HTTP traffic; drone strikes on energy infrastructure on August 12 caused a ten-hour disruption with traffic down as much as 95%. In the U.S., a cooling system failure at a Phoenix data center on August 13 caused a near-total traffic drop from Namecheap (AS22612). Power disruptions also hit Eswatini, Botswana, Tajikistan, Kenya, Saint Lucia, Georgia, and Gabon, ranging from sudden failures to deliberate load-shedding such as that in Eswatini.

Natural disasters

Guam faced its second major storm disruption in a single year when Super Typhoon Bavi arrived less than three months after Super Typhoon Sinlaku. Authorities declared a state of emergency ahead of peak conditions, but winds still brought down key transmission lines; the Guam Power Authority reported only about 25% of distribution feeders online at one point, and Internet traffic took multiple days to recover.

A magnitude 7.1 earthquake in Japan prompted evacuation orders for roughly 150,000 people in Kumamoto, with the connectivity impact concentrated in desktop traffic while mobile largely held up. Colombia's magnitude 7.4 earthquake in August caused building collapses, injuries, mass evacuations, and a four-and-a-half-day Internet disruption, driven in part by damage to fiber-optic infrastructure and reflected in a significant drop in traffic from Colombia Telecomunicaciones (AS3816). In Nepal, flash floods across the Bhote Koshi and Trishuli river systems on August 26 hit Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading districts, damaging power and other services; the recorded outage lasted two hours, with HTTP traffic down as much as 18%.

Shutdowns, exams, and politics

Iraq's exam shutdowns ran on a strict schedule of 03:30–04:00 UTC, lasting about 15–90 minutes each. Most fell between August 26 and September 28, with three between July 1 and 8. According to Internet Society Pulse, Minister of Communication Mustafa Sanad confirmed the shutdown in a video message and pledged to build a digital system that would remove the need for centralized exam distribution — and therefore for exam-day shutdowns. Syria and Sudan, both frequent users of exam shutdowns in recent years, recorded none this quarter, which more likely reflects exam calendar differences than a policy shift.

Renewed conflict in Ethiopia's Tigray region came with a government-directed shutdown lasting 10 days and a 100% traffic drop, indicating a full-scale cutoff. The move recalled the 2020–2022 civil war blockade, which the World Health Organization described as a "de facto blockade." This outage appears to have stayed localized to Tigray, yet country-level HTTP traffic still fell by up to 30%.

On September 19, the day of nationwide elections, fiber-optic cable damage in Russia's Far East disrupted Chukotka, Magadan Oblast, Kamchatka Krai, and Sakhalin Oblast. Rostelecom described the incidents as deliberate damage to backbone fiber lines and said connectivity was restored over backup channels. Radar data alone cannot establish a link to the elections, though the timing stands out.

Single-network outages and recovery times

Radar also tracked outages confined to individual networks: One Communications (AS19863) in Guyana after a cable cut, MEO (AS3243) in Portugal following a reported "mass attack", Digicel Haiti (AS27653), TurkNet (AS12735) in Turkey, and Fanap Telecom (AS206065) in Iran.

Many disruptions were short-lived. Fourteen returned to typical traffic levels within an hour, and 16 recovered in under three hours — but brief outages still carry consequences for people affected by storms, earthquakes, conflict, or political unrest, for whom connectivity is access to information, coordination, safety, and help.