Cloudflare: Pakistani authorities cut mobile Internet access across the country as the nation’s voters went to cast their ballots
Cloudflare has released the data and insights on the Internet Disruptions that were observed across their network in Q1 2024. The report intends to provide an overview of observed disruptions and is not an exhaustive or complete list of issues that have occurred during the quarter. Some of the notable findings are:
According to a published report, The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said that Internet services would remain available as citizens went to the polls on February 8 to elect a new government. However, on that day, Pakistani authorities cut mobile Internet access across the country as the nation’s voters went to cast their ballots, with the authorities attributing the move “to maintain law and order” in the wake of the violence that occurred the previous day.
A 16-hour Internet disruption on March 2/3 at AS27653 (Digicel Haiti) was due to a double fiber cut as a result of violence related to attempts to oust Prime Minister Ariel Henry.
A brief traffic disruption observed on AS23944 (SKY) in the Philippines on March 18 was likely related to a fiber cut. In an advisory posted by SKY on social media, they stated that “SKY services in several areas in Marikina, Pasig and Quezon City are currently affected by a cut-fiber issue”, listing 45 affected areas.
On March 14, damage to multiple submarine cables off the west coast of Africa impacted Internet connectivity across multiple countries in West and Southern Africa. The damage was reportedly caused by underwater rock falls, and in addition to disrupting Internet connectivity, also caused availability issues for Microsoft Azure and Office 365 cloud services.
On February 24, three submarine cables that run through the Red Sea were damaged: the Seacom/Tata cable, the Asia Africa Europe-1 (AAE-1), and the Europe India Gateway (EIG).
In February, the Ukraine/Russia war reached the two-year mark, and over that time, we have covered a number of Internet outages in Ukraine caused by conflict-related attacks. On February 22, Russian air strikes on critical infrastructure in Ukraine damaged energy facilities across the country, resulting in widespread power outages.
In our Q4 2023 Internet disruption summary blog post, we noted that throughout October, November, and December, Paltel (Palestine Telecommunications Company) had published several social media posts about disruptions to its landline, mobile, and Internet services.
Anonymous Sudan reportedly launched an attack against AS12849 (HotNet Internet Services), a major Israeli telecommunications provider. The attack was apparently brief, as it only disrupted traffic between 22:00 on February 20 and 00:00 on February 21 local time (20:00 to 22:00 UTC on February 20).
Two notable submarine cable damage events during the first quarter again highlighted the importance of protecting submarine cables, and the risks associated with them passing through/near geopolitically sensitive areas. Given the reliance on submarine cables for carrying Internet traffic, this will continue to be an issue for many years to come.
