Cloudflare details Q1 Internet disruptions from quakes to storms

Cloudflare has released its Q1 2025 Internet Disruptions report, offering insights into the principal causes and global impacts of Internet outages during the first quarter of the year.

The report highlights several major incidents, including a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Myanmar, widespread power outages—one triggered by a monkey in Sri Lanka—a cyberattack on Russian infrastructure, and an absence of government-directed Internet shutdowns.

Cloudflare operates across more than 330 cities in over 125 countries, interconnecting with over 13,000 network providers, a scale that enables the company to observe disruptions at both national and network levels. According to Cloudflare, the breadth of its network provides a unique perspective on Internet resilience and the varied threats to connectivity around the world.

The Myanmar earthquake on 28 March had a particularly profound effect. The event resulted in immediate drops in Internet traffic—up to 97% in some regions—alongside significant power outages and fuel shortages. While the country as a whole saw a rapid partial recovery, Cloudflare observed that "at a network level, recovery has been mixed."

Some service providers, such as MCCL (AS134840) and Oceanwave (AS136442), continued to experience disruption nearly two weeks post-event. The report noted that "traffic remained disrupted on both networks through the end of the first quarter," despite some improvements from the immediate aftermath.

In another example of physical infrastructure vulnerability, sabotage of fibre optic cables led to two major outages in Syria. The first, on 23-24 January, occurred after damage along the highway between Damascus and Homs. Cloudflare observed that "both HTTP and DNS request traffic from Syria dropped to near zero" during the event, and "announced IPv4 address space... also saw an approximately 90% drop," indicating a substantial segment of the national network became unreachable.

The second outage on 25 March followed a similar pattern, after cables in the Maaloula and Hasiya regions were damaged. The Ministry of Communications confirmed that near-total outages occurred during both events.

Across South Asia, the report details further interruptions. In early February, several Nepalese providers experienced significant impacts after Indian provider Bharti Airtel went offline. The cause was variously attributed to an ongoing payment dispute and to fibre cuts, according to different sources. Multiple Nepali Internet providers reported disrupted service as a result.

Infrastructure problems also caused outages in Pakistan, where a fault in the AAE-1 submarine cable near Qatar led to degraded Internet quality. The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority warned of "slow browsing," and metrics from Cloudflare showed "median latency peaked at around 125 ms, up from a pre-disruption median of approximately 80 ms." Despite the issue, widespread outages were avoided due to the country's access to seven submarine cables.

Power failures caused significant Internet disruptions in several countries, as detailed in the report. Angola lost connectivity across eleven provinces on 6 January due to an electrical interruption, and a widespread failure in Chile on 25 February temporarily impacted 98.5% of the nation. In Panama, an explosion at the La Chorrera Thermoelectric Power Plant led to a countrywide outage, though "the electric system saw 75% recovery by 03:00 local time... with full restoration completed at 06:08 local time."

Particularly notable was the power outage in Sri Lanka, caused by a monkey coming into contact with a grid transformer at the Pandura electrical substation. The island-wide blackout on 9 February led to a multi-hour Internet outage, with major provider Dialog (AS18001) recording a significant drop in traffic.

Climate events also disrupted connectivity. Storm Éowyn reduced Internet traffic in Ireland's Connacht and Ulster provinces by 75% on 24 January. Hurricane-force winds from Cyclone Garance caused outages and infrastructure damage in Réunion, while in Honduras a ground fault in neighbouring El Salvador triggered a multi-hour disruption.

Cyberattacks played a role in regional connectivity issues. On 7 January, Ukrainian actors took down Russian provider Nodex. The company wrote on social media: "Dear Subscribers, our technical staff is still working on restoring the network. The process is painstaking and long. We express our deep gratitude to those who support us in this difficult moment! This is really important for us. Let me remind you that our network was attacked by Ukrainian hackers, which resulted in its complete failure. At the moment, its functioning is being restored. There will be communication. When, is still unknown." The Ukrainian Cyber Alliance claimed responsibility, and Cloudflare confirmed that Nodex network traffic "remained essentially non-existent until around 14:00 local time the next day, recovering fairly quickly after that."

Technical glitches were another cause of brief, large-scale disruption. On 14 January, multiple Russian networks, including MTS, Rostelecom, and Beeline, saw Internet traffic drop by around 80%. Roskomnadzor reported: "A brief connectivity issue was identified. Network operations were promptly restored." Outside Russia, France's Bouygues Telecom experienced a brief technical issue in March, with the provider stating: "Following a technical incident between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. you may have encountered difficulties using your services."

Fires were also a factor, as seen in Haiti, where incidents in January damaged international fibre optic cables. Digicel Haiti wrote: "Dear customers, last night at 8:30 pm we suffered damage to 2 of our international fiber optic cables caused by a fire in the metropolitan area. At 10:30 am a 3rd outage affected all international services, Internet and Moncash. Our teams are mobilized to resolve the problem as quickly as possible." This led to two periods of complete loss of Internet connectivity for Digicel's customers.

Cloudflare's Q1 report notes that for only the third time in its three-year series, there were no observed government-directed Internet shutdowns this quarter, following a single such occurrence in Q4 2024. However, the company remarked, "We expect that it will be short-lived if countries like Iraq and Syria take such measures to prevent cheating on nationwide exams."

The report reiterates Cloudflare's commitment to ongoing monitoring of Internet disruptions worldwide and highlights the spectrum of risks faced by digital infrastructure, from geopolitical conflict to environmental and technical events.