Skype CEO says company may offer credit vouchers to paying customers

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Skype CEO Tony Bates told users in a video message posted on the company’s website Thursday that the online calling service is considering giving credit vouchers to paying customers who have been affected by the major service outage that began Wednesday morning.

‘We know this has created a major impact for many of you, and we apologize profusely for this,’ Bates said, noting that Skype has heard from many customers who use the service daily for business and personal purposes.

Bates said 16.5 million users -- about 80% of the normal traffic for this time of day -- were online.

Skype has been working to restore its core services: text instant messaging, and online audio and video calling. To stabilize these areas, Bates said, resources had to be diverted away from the offline instant messaging and group video calling services.

The company has said that a number of the ‘supernodes’ that connect users failed Wednesday due to a software error. The problems started about 9 a.m. Wednesday.

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-- Abby Sewell