Skype gets reconnected

Skype users can now breathe easy, as the Internet Phone service was restored after two tough days of technical problems that made the users unable to log in. It is used by more than 200 million people around the world to make long-distant phone calls at economical rates.

The company, a division of online auction company eBay Inc., said it would Monday explain the cause of the problem. "Until then, we’d like to apologize and thank you. Precisely in that order," the company told its customers in a posting on its blog. "We know how difficult and frustrating the past two days have been. And still, your good wishes kept flowing in."

According to Skype, the problem was with its software. It blamed a rogue algorithm that prevented users from logging on to the system.

The outage began Thursday when users from different parts of the world complained they were not able to log on and make phone calls.

This is the second time when Skype went offline. The last glitch in the service was reported in October 2005 when it went dark for several hours.

Skype was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, also founders of the file sharing application Kazaa and Joost. Skype, which uses peer-to-peer technology to connect phone calls, instant messages and videos between its users runs on a variety of operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, PocketPC and Linux. Besides, computer-to-computer calls, it also connects cell phones and landline telephones.

Although the service has now been completely restored, talks of the problem’s long term effects are heating up. Gotalk, an Australian phone card distributor and also ISP and VoIP service provider, figures the outage created an opportunity for other players to make a raid on Skype's loyal subscriber base, it said in a statement.

According to some, post the outage, Skype has become more vulnerable to attack by other companies.

The long term effects, if any, will only be revealed by time. As of now, Skype users can get back; connect to their people, as they wish.