Cloudflare tracked 180 disruptions in 2025. Q4 was mostly cables, blackouts, and weather

If 2025 proved anything about global connectivity, it’s that the internet still breaks in very physical ways. Cloudflare says it “observed over 180 Internet disruptions” across the year, with Q4 shaped by cable damage, power problems, extreme weather, and technical failures that disrupted access for users across multiple regions.

The company said the quarter included “only a single government-directed Internet shutdown,” while most major incidents came down to infrastructure that can be cut, flooded, misconfigured, or switched off.

David Belson, Cloudflare’s Head of Data Insight, summarised the quarter like this: “In 2025, we observed over 180 Internet disruptions spurred by a variety of causes – some were brief and partial, while others were complete outages lasting for days. In the fourth quarter, we tracked only a single government-directed Internet shutdown, but multiple cable cuts wreaked havoc on connectivity in several countries.

Power outages and extreme weather disrupted Internet services in multiple places, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine impacted connectivity there as well. As always, a number of the disruptions we observed were due to technical problems – with some acknowledged by the relevant providers, while others had unknown causes. In addition, incidents at several hyperscaler cloud platforms and Cloudflare impacted the availability of websites and applications.”

Cable cuts remained a major driver

Cloudflare’s summary how quickly failures in international fibre links can drag down connectivity

In Haiti, the report points to multiple disruptions affecting Digicel Haiti. During one outage, Cloudflare cited a translated public update from the operator: “We advise our clientele that @DigicelHT is experiencing 2 cuts on its international fiber optic infrastructure.”

In Cameroon, Cloudflare described nationwide disruption tied to equipment issues on the West Africa Cable System. A notice cited in the report stated: “Cameroon Telecommunications (CAMTEL) wishes to inform the public that a technical incident involving WACS cable equipment in Batoke (LIMBE) occurred in the early hours of 23 October 2025, causing Internet connectivity disruptions throughout the country.”

Power instability continued to knock networks off course

Cloudflare also pointed to electricity failures as a recurring trigger for connectivity disruption.

In Kenya, Cloudflare cited an explanation from the power utility: “was triggered by an incident on the regional Kenya-Uganda interconnected power network, which caused a disturbance on the Kenyan side of the system.”

In the Dominican Republic, Cloudflare said a transmission line outage caused a major power interruption that coincided with a steep traffic drop. A translated update cited in the report said: “At 2:20 a.m. we have completed the recovery of the national electrical system, supplying 96% of the demand…”

Technical failures and cloud concentration

Not all incidents were caused by physical damage. Cloudflare also described disruptions linked to technical faults that left users without reliable service.

In Indonesia, an operator update cited in the report said: “Currently, telephone, SMS and data services are experiencing problems in several areas.”

Cloudflare also pointed to incidents affecting hyperscaler cloud platforms, arguing that outages inside widely used infrastructure can quickly spill into downstream websites and applications.

In one example, Cloudflare cited Microsoft’s description of an Azure Front Door incident: “A specific sequence of customer configuration changes, performed across two different control plane build versions, resulted in incompatible customer configuration metadata being generated. These customer configuration changes themselves were valid and non-malicious – however they produced metadata that, when deployed to edge site servers, exposed a latent bug in the data plane. This incompatibility triggered a crash during asynchronous processing within the data plane service.”

Cloudflare’s own incidents

Cloudflare said it experienced two disruptions during Q4 that affected access to sites and applications served through its network.

“While these were not Internet outages in the classic sense, they did prevent users from accessing Web sites and applications delivered and protected by Cloudflare when they occurred,” the company said.

Cloudflare framed the quarterly roundup as an argument for real-time visibility and clearer public reporting.

“The disruptions observed in the fourth quarter underscore the importance of real-time data in maintaining global connectivity. Whether it’s a government-ordered shutdown or a minor technical issue, transparency allows the technical community to respond faster and more effectively.”