Global, US internet outages drop in 2nd week of May

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 16% to 218 in the week of May 7, compared to 261 in the prior week, according to data from ThousandEyes, a network-monitoring service owned by Cisco Systems Inc.

U.S. disruptions decreased 27% to 83, comprising 38% of all global outages. Both the latest global and U.S. figures mark a return to levels last seen in mid-April.

ThousandEyes observed two notable disruptions last week.

Network transit provider Hurricane Electric LLC on May 11 experienced an outage that affected downstream partners and customers in Hong Kong and in multiple countries, including the U.S., Costa Rica, Malaysia, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, India, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and the U.K. The disruption apparently centered on nodes in London, New York, Chicago, and San Jose, Calif. The 16-minute outage, which ran across two occurrences over a period beginning around 9:45 p.m. ET, was cleared at about 10:20 p.m. ET.

A day earlier, on May 10, U.S.-based Tier 1 carrier Level 3 Communications dealt with a disruption affecting customers and downstream partners across the U.S. The 9-minute interruption, which appeared to center on the Lumen Technologies Inc.-owned company's nodes in San Francisco, was cleared around 2:05 a.m. ET.

Global collaboration-app outages increased to seven from five in the previous week. The figure included three in the U.S.

Business-hours disruptions at the global level fell 7 percentage points to 30%. Outages in Europe, the Middle East and Africa fell 18 percentage points to 33%, but increased 1 percentage point in the U.S. and the Asia-Pacific region, to 28% and 46%, respectively.