Skype Suffers Global Blackout

Millions of Skype users have been unable to make calls using the VoIP service since last night after a software issue affected critical parts of its network according to the BBC.

Engineers have been working to rectify the problem so that people will be able to use the service over the Christmas period to contact friends and family.

"We take outages like this really seriously and apologise for the inconvenience," Skype chief Tony Bates told BBC News.  Some people are now beginning to report that their Skype services are slowly coming back online.

At it's peak the problems were causing the loss of 10 million calls, though the company was keen to stress that its Skype Connect business product was operating normally.

The problems had been caused  by "supernodes" being taken offline.  These communications hubs direct all the network traffic and act similar to a telephone exchange.

"If you want to talk to someone, and your Skype app can't find them immediately (for example, because they're connecting from a different location or from a different device) your computer or phone will first try to find a supernode to figure out how to reach them," it read.

"Under normal circumstances, there are a large number of supernodes available. Unfortunately, today, many of them were taken offline by a problem affecting some versions of Skype."

Skype are expecting that the problems will be rectified later today and that the services will be working normally again for the Christmas holiday period.

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