THE first quarter of 2026 saw an unusually high number of prolonged Internet disruptions driven by government-directed shutdowns, power outages and military action, with Uganda, Iran and the Republic of Congo among the most affected.
Uganda’s nationwide shutdown began around 18:00 local time on 13 January and traffic at the UIXP fell to about 1 Gbps, with restoration announced on 26 January, while Iran experienced two nationwide shutdowns in January and February, the second beginning on 28 February as military strikes escalated.
The Middle East was hit hard by drone strikes that damaged Amazon Web Services data centres in the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, triggering elevated connection failures in me-central-1 and me-south-1 as AWS warned that instability would continue. Separately, Cuba endured three separate National Electric System collapses in March, each causing substantial Internet disruption and traffic losses of up to about 77%, with recovery occurring in the following hours or days.
Other notable incidents included power outages in Argentina, Moldova, Paraguay and the Dominican Republic, as well as a notable routing-related disruption in Grenada and a service outage affecting TalkTalk in the United Kingdom. According to Cloudflare Radar, these disruptions collectively underscored how political events, infrastructure fragility and military actions can translate into pervasive Internet connectivity impacts.