Cloudflare reports sharp global fall in shutdowns, outages

Cloudflare has reported a sharp fall in government-directed internet shutdowns in the final quarter of 2025, alongside disruption linked to cable damage, extreme weather, power outages and the war in Ukraine.

The company said it tracked only one government-ordered shutdown during the quarter. It also detailed multiple incidents tied to fibre cuts and submarine cable damage across the Caribbean, Africa and South Asia. Several outages followed storms and grid failures.

Cloudflare bases the report on deviations from expected traffic patterns observed across its network. The company operates a global network across more than 330 cities in more than 125 countries.

Shutdowns fall

Cloudflare said Tanzania was the only country where it observed a government-directed shutdown in the quarter. It said the shutdown began on October 29 as violent protests took place during the country's presidential election.

Traffic in Tanzania fell from around 12:30 local time. Cloudflare said it dropped more than 90% compared with the previous week. The company said the disruption lasted around 26 hours, before traffic started to return the next day.

Cloudflare said the restoration did not hold. It reported a second near-complete outage beginning around two hours after traffic returned. It said traffic did not recover until November 3.

The report also noted nominal drops in announced IPv4 and IPv6 address space during the shutdown. Cloudflare said it did not observe a complete loss of announcements that would indicate total disconnection of the country from the internet.

Cable damage

Cloudflare reported repeated disruption from fibre damage in Haiti. It said traffic from Digicel Haiti began to fall on October 16 and reached near zero before recovering within hours. It cited a translated social media post from the operator's Director General stating: "We advise our clientele that @DigicelHT is experiencing 2 cuts on its international fiber optic infrastructure."

Cloudflare said it observed another Digicel Haiti outage on November 25. It said traffic dropped about an hour before a translated post from the operator's Director General described a cut affecting "international optical fiber infrastructure on National Road 1". Cloudflare said it observed a complete outage for several hours before service returned.

In Pakistan, Cloudflare linked disruption at Cybernet and StormFibre to damage affecting the PEACE submarine cable. It said traffic dropped sharply on October 20 and address space announcements fell at the same time. Cloudflare said traffic recovered by the next day.

Cloudflare also described disruption across multiple providers in Cameroon on October 23, which it said reports attributed to problems on the WACS submarine cable. It said traffic fell around 05:00 local time and recovered later that day, with volatility that saw drops of up to 99% at times.

In the Dominican Republic, Cloudflare said it observed a sharp traffic drop at Claro Dominicana on December 9. It linked the event to fibre outages and cited a provider post stating that severed cables caused "intermittency and slowness in some services".

Storm impacts

Cloudflare said Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica caused significant damage and power outages. It reported that internet traffic dropped sharply from the morning of October 28, reaching as much as 70% below the prior week. It said traffic remained well below pre-storm levels for several days and only began to show stronger recovery in early November.

Cloudflare also reported disruption in Sri Lanka and Indonesia following Cyclone Senyar on November 26. It said the storm brought floods and landslides that damaged telecommunications and power infrastructure. Cloudflare said several Sri Lankan provinces outside the Western Province saw traffic drops of 80% to 95% compared with the previous week.

In Indonesia, Cloudflare said Aceh and the Sumatra regions saw the biggest disruptions. It reported an initial drop of more than 75% in Aceh and a drop in North Sumatra before recovery in the following week.

Power and war

Cloudflare also pointed to power outages as a driver of connectivity problems. It said a transmission line outage in the Dominican Republic on November 11 led to a near 50% drop in national traffic versus the prior week. It said the lower levels persisted until a recovery of the electrical system was reported.

In Kenya, Cloudflare said a major power outage on December 9 affected multiple regions. It reported a national traffic drop of as much as 18% and said the impacts to connectivity lasted for nearly four hours.

In Ukraine, Cloudflare said Russian drone strikes on the Odesa region damaged energy infrastructure and triggered power outages. It reported that internet traffic dropped by as much as 57% compared with the previous week and then recovered over several days.

Cloud platforms

Cloudflare said it launched a Cloud Observatory page on its Radar service during the quarter. It said the page tracks availability issues at a regional level across Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

The company also described cloud platform incidents during the quarter, including an event in Amazon Web Services' us-east-1 region and an incident affecting Microsoft Azure's Azure Front Door service. Cloudflare said it observed elevated errors and degraded performance metrics during those events.

Cloudflare reported two incidents that affected its own services during the quarter. It said a November 18 event followed a software failure related to a permissions change in a database system. It said a December 5 event affected a subset of customers and followed changes to request body parsing logic during mitigation work for a newly disclosed React Server Components vulnerability.

"The disruptions observed in the fourth quarter underscore the importance of real-time data in maintaining global connectivity," said David Belson, Head of Data Insight, Cloudflare.

"We will continue to track these shifts on Cloudflare Radar, providing the insights needed to navigate the complexities of modern networking," said Belson.