In what has probably been one of the worst downtimes in the history of Skype (perhaps rivaling that of even Tumblr’s outage), it looks like the VoIP king is slowly bringing its services back online.
While this outage could not have come at the worst time (during the holidays nonetheless), it looks like loyal customers will be compensated for the outage that has affected millions of users.
It’s taken some time to do, but we’re making steady progress. To put things in perspective, there are now around 16.5 million people online on Skype around the world. This is about 80% of what we’d normally expect to see at this time of day.
We’ve stabilised Skype’s core functionality – IM, audio and video – but it will take longer for us to restore offline IM and group video calling. It’s been a tough 24 hours for many of you – and I’d like to thank you for your patience as we bring Skype back to normal.
I realise that it’s difficult to compensate you for not being able to talk to or see your friends, family or colleagues, but we’re planning to offer Skype Credit vouchers to all of our loyal paying customers to thank you for your continued support. (Official Skype Blog)
Skype has yet to reveal how much compensation users will receive (as well as when the credits will role in), but either way it’s good to see Tony Bates (the CEO of Skype) explaining the issue via video to users who are obviously not pleased with the inability to contact their loved ones.
The VoIP king plans on updating more users via Twitter (@Skype) as well as blogging, although users can also report problems to @PeterAtSkype (who has been keeping everyone updated regarding the downtime).
Originally posted on December 23, 2010 @ 3:37 pm