Daily Payload
Home | News Archive | Search | Submit Story | Subscribe | Contact Us

Skype Suffers from a Global Service Outage

August 16, 2007

Skype, one of the largest and most popular VoIP networks in the world, was out of service for much of the day on August 16, 2007. From time to time, the Skype client would gain connectivity to at least part of the network, one time showing just over 55,000 users logged in, a far smaller number than the seven to nine million users usually logged into the network.

Skype posted a message on its web site saying, "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." Yes, you read that correctly: it might take an entire day in order to fix the problem which has prevented the vast majority of Skype users from accessing the global network.

Skype has had its share of problems, though users also appreciate that, in general, Skype "just works" as advertised. Even so, the good folks at Skype are probably hearing a lot of angry voices today, as their phone service is no longer operable. More than five hours passed after users started to report login problem before Skype posted the message about possibly needing an additional 24 hours to fix it. More than eleven hours later, the problem was still not resolved.

Just recently, there was an article that raised issues with respect to the impact of business when VoIP fails to work. As Skype tries to make its entrance into the enterprise communication space, Skype will have to face the same question and, it would appear, they will be facing that this week. How many businesses are impacted by this outage? How much potential revenue was lost?

This is a very bad day for Skype, to say the least.