Skype operation returning to normal

Skype on Friday said its services were returning to normal after the internet communications group experienced its biggest global outage in three years.

Tony Bates, Skype's chief executive, told customers via a blog and accompanying video that the engineers had identified the problem and stabilised the core instant messenger, audio and video services, which were running at about "90-plus per cent of what we'd typically see from a user load on a day like today".

Bates said the outage, which hit during a peak period for the online calls service on Wednesday, was caused by a "software issue" and not by a malicious attack.

Millions of people rely on Skype for calls to friends and family overseas over Christmas because it is cheaper than using landline and mobile networks. Skype provides free calls between users of its service, charging for outbound and inbound calls between landlines or mobile phones.

Bates apologised for the problems and promised Skype users calling credit vouchers as compensation. Pay as you go and pre-pay users are being offered a Skype voucher for 30 minutes of free calling to landlines anywhere in the world. Active subscribers are being offered a week's extra subscription service.

"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," Bates said.

Stock market offering

The service failure comes ahead of Skype's planned stock market offering next year, which it postponed as it seeks to push harder into the competitive business telephony market. Skype, which is partly owned by Ebay, was completely offline for more than three hours on Wednesday evening, UK time.

At peak times, more than 25 million people use Skype simultaneously. Skype's 800 employees rely on their own service for internal communications too, forcing them back on to e-mail and traditional phones during the downtime.

Skype explained that the outage was caused by problems with the "supernodes" upon which it relies to route much of its traffic.

As a peer-to-peer service, Skype does not have a central exchange like a regular telephone network, instead it passes call information along a chain of users across the regular internet. Although Skype has some of its own dedicated servers, supernode functions can often be performed by regular users. Skype's engineers repurposed some of their servers that were running non-core functions, such as group video chat, to try and fix the problem.

The distributed nature of Skype's network removes a "single point of failure" which can affect traditional telephone exchanges, but also means that errors can be more widespread and difficult to fix.

Skype's last major outage, in August 2007, was caused by a different problem relating to a software update.

DU TO START VOIP FROM UAE

A service which allows users to make cheap international calls through the Internet will soon be launched by du, the company’s commercial director said.

The service will serve as an alternative to Skype, which is banned in the UAE, and will be the first locally developed voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) service.

It comes after the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) relaxed several important restrictions on VoIP in March, allowing the country’s two telecom companies Etisalat and du to begin providing the popular service.

Farid Faraidooni, chief commercial director for du, said full details of the new service will begin to emerge
 in the next two months.

“As soon as the TRA altered its policy on VoIP, we began developing this kind of service,” he told Khaleej Times.

“It will not be free, but then not even Skype is free,” he added. “But it will definitely be cheaper to use VoIP for international calls.

“We will be offering different tariffs based on the subscription of the customer.”Faraidooni declined to say whether or not the service would be available to smart-phone users.

The comments by Faraidooni reflect the first effort by local firms to capitalise on the popularity of VoIP programmes, particularly Skype.

Expatriates looking to make cheap calls to home have traditionally used Skype, which is officially banned yet still remains popular.

While traditional mobile phones charge around Dh1.60 a minute for a peak-hour call to India, Skype offers calls at a fraction of that rate.

Skype CEO Josh Silverman told reporters at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit in March that the UAE’s ban on the VoIP programme was “short-sighted”.

“We think it is in the interest of the residents of the UAE and the Emirati government and economy to allow Skype as almost every other country on earth does,” he said.

Two weeks later after Silverman’s comments, the TRA relaxed its policy on VoIP but reiterated that only UAE firms — including newcomers Yahsat and Thuraya — could provide 
the service.

So far, du is the only local firm to announce it will provide an independent VoIP service.

A spokesman for Etisalat said that there was no update to the company’s policy on VoIP.