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.
The week of April 24 marked the third consecutive weekly increase in the volume of global internet outages since a low point in early April, according to data from ThousandEyes, a network-monitoring service owned by Cisco Systems Inc.
Global outages for the just-concluded week totaled 296, up slightly from 294 in the prior week. U.S. outages also rose, up 4% to 152 from the previous week's tally of 146. U.S. outages accounted for 52% of the global total, compared to 50% a week earlier.
Among the week's most notable outages, global internet service provider and Tata Communications Ltd. unit Tata Communications (America) Inc. on April 27 experienced a disruption that impacted customers and downstream partners in the U.S., Australia, India, Japan and the Philippines. The outage, which affected nodes in Ashburn, Va.; Chicago; Los Angeles; and Hong Kong, lasted about 29 minutes across two occurrences over an hour before it was cleared around 8:25 a.m. ET.
ThousandEyes also observed an interruption April 29 that affected users of network transit provider Hurricane Electric LLC in multiple countries such as the U.S., Spain, Russia and Ireland. The outage, which lasted about 11 minutes over two periods during a half-hour duration, was cleared around 1 a.m. ET. The outage centered on nodes in Ashburn, Va., and New York.
Meanwhile, Microsoft Corp. experienced an outage April 27 that affected the users of its Teams collaboration app globally. During the outage, the Teams service apparently was unable to authenticate users' connection requests. The interruption was first observed about 6 a.m. ET and lasted about 1.5 hours. The outage occurred outside business hours for a large part of the Americas but led to service disruption for users connecting from Asia and Europe.
Globally, collaboration-app outages during the week of April 24 increased 50% to six outages from four in the previous week. Five of the outages occurred in the U.S., a 67% increase from the prior week's total of three.
Business-hours outages worldwide represented 45% of total global disruptions, a modest increase of 2% from the prior week. Business-hours outages also rose 7% week over week in the U.S. to 52% of the total.
Europe, the Middle East and Africa recorded a 9% week over week decrease in business-hours outages, to 37%. Business-hour outages in the Asia-Pacific region also dipped 3%, to 35%.
