Submarine Cable Cuts, Power Failures, and Cyberattacks Impact Connectivity Across Middle East and Africa.
Cloudflare has released its Q3 2025 Internet Disruption Report, revealing significant connectivity challenges across regions worldwide. Covering the period between July and September 2025, the report identifies multiple large-scale Internet outages linked to submarine cable damage, power failures, cyber incidents, and government-imposed Internet restrictions — particularly in the Middle East and Africa (MEA).
The findings, published through Cloudflare Radar, the company’s real-time Internet intelligence platform, underscore the increasing complexity and fragility of global Internet infrastructure. Cloudflare’s analysis highlights how diverse causes — from geopolitical factors to infrastructure failures — continue to disrupt digital connectivity across continents.
MEA: Internet Connectivity Under Strain
The MEA region experienced some of the most severe Internet disruptions in Q3 2025:
- United Arab Emirates: A submarine cable cut on July 17 led to a 28% drop in Internet traffic, disrupting multiple ISPs and international routing paths. Restoration efforts gradually restored connectivity through rerouting.
- Egypt: A fire at a major telecom facility in Cairo caused widespread outages across multiple service providers.
- Sudan, Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan: Government-imposed Internet shutdowns were recorded, often aligned with national exams or security concerns, highlighting continued political control over digital access.
- Tanzania: A nationwide power outage triggered severe connectivity losses, underscoring the vulnerability of digital infrastructure in developing economies.
- Yemen: A targeted cyberattack disrupted international routes, temporarily isolating networks from global Internet connectivity.
Global Internet Disruption Trends
Outside the MEA region, Cloudflare Radar reported multiple incidents worldwide, including:
- Government-directed shutdowns in Venezuela and parts of Asia.
- Submarine and terrestrial cable failures impacting Pakistan and Southeast Asia.
- Power and data center outages across Cuba, Gibraltar, and the Czech Republic.
Technical anomalies, such as the Starlink service disruption and abnormal Great Firewall activity in China, which injected forged TCP resets that blocked encrypted traffic.
Cloudflare Radar: Promoting Internet Transparency and Resilience
Cloudflare’s Radar platform now delivers enhanced regional Internet analytics, enabling researchers, ISPs, journalists, and policymakers to study latency, DNS behavior, and routing patterns during major outage events. This enhanced visibility supports global efforts to strengthen Internet reliability, cybersecurity, and transparency.
The Cloudflare Q3 2025 Internet Disruption Report reinforces the company’s mission to build a more secure, resilient, and open Internet. The full report, along with interactive data charts and network-level insights, is publicly available through the Cloudflare Radar Outage Center and the official Cloudflare Blog.
