Global internet outages drop by almost 50% from mid-June spike

This weekly feature from S&P Global Market Intelligence, in collaboration with internet-service monitoring company ThousandEyes, aims to give remote workers insights into internet service disruptions.

Global internet outages fell by 47% in the week of June 19, following a spike the previous week, according to data from ThousandEyes, a network-monitoring service owned by Cisco Systems Inc.

ThousandEyes flagged 254 outages during the week of June 19, down from 481 the prior week. That marked the first time that the number of outages fell week-to-week in June.

U.S. outages fell even more sharply over the same period, down 66% in the week of June 19, to 108. The U.S. comprised 43% of all global outages that week, down from 66% a week earlier.

Among the most notable recent outages was a June 22 disruption to U.S.-based cloud services provider Internap Corp., which impacted downstream partners and customers in the U.S. and nine other countries and territories. The interruption, which centered on nodes in New York, ran for 24 minutes and was cleared around 1:15 a.m. ET.

Additionally, on June 24, Amazon.com Inc. experienced an outage that affected customers and downstream partners in nine countries, including the U.S. and the U.K. The disruption apparently centered on nodes in Columbus, Ohio, and lasted about 17 minutes before it was cleared at about 3:35 p.m. ET.

A day earlier, on June 23, global internet service provider Tata Communications (America) Inc. experienced a disruption that appeared to center on nodes in Montreal, Canada and Chicago. The outage, which lasted around 12 minutes and was cleared about 7:35 p.m. ET, affected the Tata Communications Ltd. unit's downstream partners and customers in 10 countries.

The number of global collaboration-app disruptions remained unchanged at six for the second week in a row. Four of the outages occurred in the U.S.

Globally, business-hours disruptions nudged up 1 percentage point week over week, to 35% of total outages. The U.S. total for business-hours outages increased 11 percentage points to 37%.

Total business-hours outages in Europe, the Middle East and Africa dropped 17 percentage points, to 29% from 46% in the previous week. In the Asia-Pacific region, business-hours outages decreased 3 percentage points week over week, to 38%.