A SURGE in government-directed shutdowns, widespread power outages, and cyberattacks led to significant internet disruptions across multiple countries in the second quarter of 2025, according to a quarterly summary by Cloudflare.
Image created using ChatGPT.
After no reported state-ordered shutdowns in the first quarter, Q2 saw renewed enforcement in Libya, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Panama. In Libya, protests against the government of national unity triggered nationwide outages across several major providers on May 16 and 17. In Iran, internet access was repeatedly curtailed in June following Israeli strikes on nuclear facilities. A third shutdown, lasting a week, was attributed to national security concerns and cyber threats.
Iraq and Syria continued their now-routine shutdowns during school exams. Iraq’s outages, implemented by both federal and Kurdistan regional governments, occurred between May 20 and July 6. Syria’s restrictions, limited to mobile networks for the first time, were confined to exam centers during scheduled test dates in June.
Panama also saw Internet and mobile service cut in Bocas del Toro province due to local protests over pension reforms. The disruption lasted from June 21 to June 30.
Power grid instability caused further disruptions in several regions. A massive blackout on April 28 crippled Internet traffic in Portugal and Spain, with connectivity plunging by as much as 90 percent in some areas. Related outages were also observed in Morocco, where Orange Maroc reported international connection issues.
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Other nations hit by power-related disruptions included Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, North Macedonia, the Maldives, and Curaçao. In Curaçao, an extended outage at provider Flow was attributed to a commercial power failure.
Fiber-optic cable damage caused major outages in Haiti and Malawi. Digicel Haiti experienced two total service disruptions in May, with one linked to infrastructure damage. In Malawi, vandalism impacted Airtel’s network for 90 minutes on June 24.
Technical failures also played a role. Bell Canada’s May 21 router update caused an hourlong outage, while DNS issues were suspected in a June 19 outage affecting Lumen/CenturyLink in the United States.
Russia’s ASVT was knocked offline by a large-scale distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack on May 28, with traffic disruptions persisting for days. The attack followed a similar incident in March against another Russian provider.
Several unexplained outages also occurred. Finland’s Telia experienced a brief but near-complete disruption on April 1. In the Philippines, SkyCable customers were offline for nearly eight hours on May 8 without public explanation. Thailand’s TrueMove H saw a national outage on May 22, reportedly due to server or DNS issues.
Cloudflare noted the continued fragility of the global internet, highlighting that disruptions often ripple across interconnected networks and infrastructures. The report also emphasized that while attribution for many disruptions remains difficult, the growing trend of shutdowns — especially those tied to civil unrest and education — raises serious concerns for global internet resilience.
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