Cloudflare reports Q1 disruption surge
- Cloudflare said on April 28 that Q1 2026 internet outages jumped as Uganda and Iran imposed shutdowns and conflict hit cloud infrastructure. - The report cited three Cuban grid collapses, storm-related outages in Portugal, and drone strikes that disrupted hyperscaler cloud infrastructure in the Middle East. - Portugal's €22.6 billion resilience plan shows governments are spending after outages and storms, not just tracking them. (reuters.com)
Cloudflare said the first quarter of 2026 brought a wave of internet disruptions, from state-ordered shutdowns to power failures and conflict damage. (blog.cloudflare.com) The company said Uganda and Iran both saw prolonged government-directed internet blackouts in Q1, a reversal from the same quarter a year earlier, when Cloudflare said it observed none. (blog.cloudflare.com) Cloudflare also logged three separate collapses of Cuba's national electrical grid, weather-driven connectivity losses in Portugal, cable damage in the Republic of Congo, and a Verizon Wireless technical problem in the United States. (blog.cloudflare.com) The report said military action disrupted connectivity in Ukraine and also hit hyperscaler cloud infrastructure in the Middle East, extending outage risk beyond telecom networks and into cloud platforms. (blog.cloudflare.com) (datacenterdynamics.com) That matters because internet outages are no longer showing up as isolated software failures. Cloudflare's quarter was shaped by elections, power systems, storms, war and physical infrastructure damage. (blog.cloudflare.com) Portugal moved on the same theme a day later. On April 28, Prime Minister Luis Montenegro's government announced a €22.6 billion programme over nine years to harden the country against climate risks, power outages, seismic threats and cyberattacks. (reuters.com) Reuters reported the Portuguese plan followed severe January and February storms that caused an estimated €5.3 billion in damage, plus a major Spain-Portugal blackout a year earlier. (reuters.com) Montenegro said the programme includes €4 billion for electricity and natural gas grids, energy storage and new hydroelectric dams, with funding split across the state budget, private financing and European funds. (reuters.com) Put together, the two developments show the same shift from opposite ends: cloud operators are counting more disruptions tied to politics and physical shocks, while governments are budgeting for more of them. (blog.cloudflare.com) (reuters.com)
