A message posted on the company’s website said:
“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. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
The website also states that downloads of Skype have been temporarily disabled.
Bloggers are speculating that there is a user authentication issue to blame for service being down, while others are blogging that a large number of Windows Vista and XP service patches that went out yesterday may have disrupted Skype's peer-to-peer network.
Users can download Skype software to access the company’s voice-over-IP network and is especially popular with users for calling internationally. Skype uses the PCs of its users as peering points to route the incoming and outgoing calls of other users in the area.
The company currently has 220 million accounts, with between 5 to 6 million users logged in at any one time.
Previous to the current outage, Skype reported brief interruptions in service once in 2004 and one time in 2005.