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 number of global internet outages decreased by 9% in the third week of March compared to the previous week, marking the third consecutive weekly drop since a peak in late February, according to data from ThousandEyes, a network-monitoring service owned by Cisco Systems Inc.

A total of 354 outages occurred globally in the week ended March 19, compared to 388 the previous week. Meanwhile, U.S. outages climbed slightly, up 3% over the same period to 180 from 174. U.S. outages accounted for 51% of the global total in the week ended March 19, compared to 45% a week earlier.

Last week's major outages included a March 17 disruption that impacted customers of U.S.-based content delivery network services company Cloudflare Inc. in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S. and Canada. The outage was first observed at about 10:20 a.m. EDT and lasted about 33 minutes over a one-hour period. The interruption apparently centered on nodes in Kansas City, Mo., and Seattle.

Global outages among collaboration apps during the most recent week decreased by half, to two from four in the previous week. None of these outages occurred in the U.S., marking the first week without a U.S. collaboration app outage in March and the second in 2021 to date.

The percentage of global internet outages occurring during business hours rose to 39% last week, up from 30% in the week prior. In the U.S., 39% of all outages occurred within local business hours, compared to 43% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and 36% in the Asia-Pacific region.