In 2025, prolonged and large-scale internet outages cost the global economy $19.7 billion.
In 2025, prolonged and large-scale internet outages cost the global economy $19.7 billion.
According to the publication Interesting Engineering, which collected interesting statistics on this subject, last year there were more than 200 Internet outages in 28 countries, affecting approximately 800 million people.
At the same time, Internet outages lasted a total of over 120,000 hours last year.
The publication emphasizes that prolonged internet outages are rarely just technical problems, but are mostly caused by political decisions by local governments during periods of unrest, elections, or conflict.
In general, as journalists calculated, internet shutdowns around the world cost economies almost $53 billion between 2020 and 2024.
Meanwhile, in January 2026, UNESCO warned of internet outages, reporting more than 300 outages in 54 countries over the past two years. According to this data, 2024 was the worst year for outages since 2016.
Recent examples include the Taliban’s implementation of an internet shutdown in Afghanistan between September and October 2025. In Nepal, in September 2025, amid political unrest, officials blocked 26 social media and messaging apps.
Internet access was also severely restricted in Cameroon during the presidential elections in October 2025.
Meanwhile, Iran is currently experiencing the longest internet outage in history — the country’s residents have been without the internet for more than two months.
Interestingly, in Ukraine, there are also calls from time to time for radical actions, such as shutting down the internet during alarms about military risks. This discussion has been going on for a long time in the Ukrainian tech community.
