Skype update blamed for sudden global outage

by Steven Mostyn - May 27 2011, 11:27

Internet telephony platform Skype this week suffered through a bout of shoddy connectivity and poor reliability.

Just two weeks ago, the hugely popular VoIP service was acquired by software giant and Windows creator Microsoft. We really hope this isn’t a worrying sign of things to come?

In the main, it is believed that call-connection problems affected Skype users running the software on Windows-equipped computers—although those attempting to call via Mac or Linux-based systems also reportedly suffered similar issues.

News of Skype’s call connection hiccups first surfaced through micro-blogging service Twitter and other social networks, where disgruntled users were quick to heap the blame upon a recent Skype update.

According to an official Skype blog post regarding the matter, sporadic outages around the world were arising due to the mistaken deletion of a file called “shared.xml”, which left a “small number” of users unable to sign-in or make Internet calls.

The overall Skype service was consequently shunted further askew when the Skype.com website was knocked offline as large volumes of customers sought out a solution to the initial connectivity problem.

Skype has since posted useful solution advice relevant to each of the affected operating systems—all of which can be viewed by clicking here.

Earlier this month, Redmond-based Microsoft Corp. stumped up a staggering $8.5 billion USD to purchase Skype.

Around the Web