- Cloudflare tracked global internet outages from July to September in 125 countries
- Government-imposed blackouts remain among the most common causes of global disruption
- Iraq, Syria and Sudan continued their annual shutdowns during national exam periods
Cloudflare’s Q3 Internet Outages report paints a worrying picture of how fragile global connectivity still is, even in an era of advanced networking and sophisticated DDoS protection.
Between July and September 2025, the company tracked outages triggered by events ranging from natural disasters and cyber attacks to government-imposed 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” behind widespread service outages.
Government orders remain one of the biggest culprits
Internet blackouts imposed by government authorities remain one of the most frequent disruptions worldwide.
Iraq, Syria and Sudan again shut down online access during national exam periods, a practice that has become routine in these regions.
Officials in Syria even claimed success in targeting “organized exam cheating networks”, suggesting that such disruptions were part of a wider enforcement strategy.
Elsewhere, Venezuela saw a more unusual case when provider SuperCable was ordered offline after losing its license, cutting off connections for thousands of users in mid-August.
Cloudflare described these instances as consistent with past patterns of short, repeated and localized restrictions.
The report shows how easily physical networks can fail by accident or negligence. A stray bullet in Texas damaged a fiber line, causing a two-hour outage for Spectrum users.
In the Dominican Republic and Angola, construction work cut cables and stopped connections for hours.
Similar problems emerged in Pakistan, Haiti and the United Arab Emirates, where simultaneous cable cuts from the Red Sea brought cross-country traffic to a standstill.
Cloudflare’s findings suggest that no amount of routing optimization or firewall management can compensate for the weaknesses of physical infrastructure once it is damaged.
Natural and accidental disasters added to the quarter’s turmoil. In Egypt, a fire at the Ramses Central Exchange cut off major providers such as Vodafone and Orange.
An 8.8 magnitude earthquake on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula paralyzed regional traffic almost immediately.
Even space-based services were affected. Starlink reported a global outage on July 24 after “failure of key internal software services that power the core network.”
Global internet access remains vulnerable to a range of threats, from cyber attacks to the limits of basic infrastructure. Outages can come from the most unexpected sources.
Cloudflare noted that its summary is “not an exhaustive or complete list,” but the evidence points to a clear reality: the global network may be large, but it remains breakable.
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