The widely used communications app Skype appeared to partially go down this Monday for several hours, causing many issues for the numerous businesses whom rely on the technology to keep in contact with suppliers, clients, and staff.
The online version seemed to remain unaffected. Skype say that the outage was due to a network issue, but didn’t reveal any further details.
It is a vastly used communication source when it comes to chatting to people in different countries. At CDA we use Skype to communicate with customers, utilising many of the program’s features to assist them, such as the screen sharing option. Their big selling point was that users could make free voice calls (using their computers and a headset) to each other from anywhere in the world.
Skype was launched in 2003, and has more than 600 million worldwide users. Microsoft then bought the application for £5.1 billion! The biggest selling point is that it is free to call other Skype users’ accounts; only having to pay when users call regular telephone numbers. However, these charges are still cheap compared to a standard phone service and long distance calls.
Skype also handles instant messaging as well as voice calling.
What are your thoughts on Monday’s outage? Was your business affected? Will you keep using the program, or will you adjust your reliance on it? We’d love to hear your views.
