Cloudflare: Autocrats, Wars, and Votes Caged the Net in Q1

Cloudflare: autocrats, wars, and votes caged the net in Q1

: Iran went dark twice, AWS got droned, oh and TalkTalk broke something it refuses to talk about

Internet outages are increasingly having a societal impact

Cloudflare is reporting a clear increase in the number of internet outages worldwide in the first quarter of 2026.

Cloudflare flags surge in major internet outages worldwide

Cloudflare says major internet outages surged in Q1 2026, with shutdowns in Iran, Uganda and Congo, plus war, weather and power cuts worldwide.

Shutdowns, power outages, and conflict: a review of Q1 2026 Internet disruptions

In the first quarter of 2026, government-directed shutdowns figured prominently, with prolonged Internet blackouts in both Uganda and Iran, a stark contrast to the lack of observed government-directed shutdowns in the same quarter a year prior. This quarter, we also observed a number of Internet disruptions caused by power outages, including three separate collapses of […]

Internet outages spike in Q1 2026, says Cloudflare

Iran War largely to blame