Government-directed shutdowns defined the first quarter of 2026, and two of the starkest came in Uganda and Iran. In Uganda, authorities ordered a nationwide Internet blackout ahead of the Jan. 15 presidential election. In Iran, citizens spent much of the quarter offline or on severely limited service after two nationwide Internet shutdowns.
The Uganda Communications Commission told mobile network operators to suspend public Internet access effective 18:00 local time on Jan. 13, saying the move was needed to curb misinformation, disinformation, electoral fraud and related risks. That order came only days after the commission said claims that access would be blocked were false and misleading. Domestic traffic at the Uganda Internet Exchange Point fell from about 72 Gbps to 1 Gbps once the shutdown began, while Cloudflare data showed a near-complete loss of traffic from the country. Ugandan traffic stayed effectively at zero through 23:00 local time on Jan. 17, and connectivity was only partially restored after Yoweri Museveni was declared winner of a seventh term. Full restoration was announced on Jan. 26, and MTN Uganda and Airtel Uganda both later said restrictions had been lifted. The shutdown triggered lawsuits against the commission and telecoms companies and drew criticism from digital rights groups including CIPESA. Uganda had also blocked Internet access during its 2021 election.
Iran followed a different but equally damaging pattern. The first shutdown began around 20:00 local time on Jan. 8 and traffic from the country remained near zero until Jan. 21. A small amount of traffic briefly returned that day, then disappeared a little more than 24 hours later. A similar restoration happened on Jan. 25, before traffic recovered more aggressively on Jan. 27. For many users, that meant a quarter in which the internet was available only in scraps, then gone again.
The two countries were part of a broader picture that also included power outages, military action, severe weather, cable damage and technical problems. Cloudflare observed Internet disruptions tied to power cuts. Cuba suffered three separate collapses of its national electrical grid. Military action continued to disrupt connectivity in Ukraine and also affected hyperscaler cloud infrastructure in the Middle East. Severe weather knocked out service in Portugal, cable damage hit the Republic of Congo, a technical problem affected Verizon Wireless in the United States, and unknown issues briefly disrupted customers in Guinea and the United Kingdom.
The quarter made one point hard to miss: the internet remained vulnerable not just to physical damage and technical failure, but to state action that can take an entire country offline in minutes. Uganda’s case ended with restoration and litigation. Iran’s ended the quarter with traffic back, but only after weeks of near-silence that showed how quickly connectivity can disappear when authorities decide it should.
