Skype suffers major service outage

Stuart Corner
Friday, 17 August 2007 01:07

Your IT - Home IT

Skype has suffered a software problem which has left users unable to log in or make Skype to-Skype calls.

In a bulletin posted on its web site the company says: "Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it’s a software issue. We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologise for the inconvenience."

It has not indicated the extent of the problem, but some reports say millions of users are affected. And the company has temporarily suspended downloads of Skype software. For those lucky enough to be logged in, the status page on its website reports SkypeIn, SkypeOut, voicemail and Skype SMS all working normally.

Skype has a good track record of reliability, its last outage was in October 2005. The stock price of parent company eBay dipped 2.37 percent following announcement of the problem. However the market overall was down that day.