Internet Outages Are Getting More Severe—and May Get Worse

NBC News and other outlets report that severe internet outages across major providers and infrastructure players have become more frequent and impactful in recent years. Events involving Cloudflare, undersea cables, data centers and backbone carriers have caused multi-country disruptions and broken key services for hours at a time. As more critical functions—from banking to healthcare to logistics—depend on online connectivity, the stakes of downtime keep climbing.​

Experts interviewed by NBC point to a mix of factors: rising traffic, complex software stacks, cyberattacks, misconfigurations and climate-related stresses on physical infrastructure. They warn that absent greater investment in resilience and diversification, future outages could be longer, more widespread and harder to diagnose. Many organizations still underestimate how deeply their operations depend on third-party networks and platforms.​

Users and businesses are advised to plan for intermittent connectivity as a normal risk, not a rare anomaly. That includes offline workflows, backup communication channels and clear continuity plans. Policymakers may also push for transparency and standards around uptime reporting and incident disclosure.​