Paying Skype users get a week's free service

IDG News Service - Skype Ltd. is offering a week of free service to paying customers who may have been hit by the two-day outage of its Internet telephony service last week.

The company has sent an e-mail to customers who pay for its premium services informing them of the offer, Skype spokeswoman Imogen Bailey said today.

"As a goodwill gesture to all you faithful Skype Pro, Skype Unlimited, SkypeIn or Skype Voicemail customers, we're adding an additional seven days to your current subscription free of charge," the e-mail said. "And even if you didn't miss out on using Skype last week, you can still have a week free on Skype, on the house."

The widespread collapse of the peer-to-peer voice-over-IP service last week occurred when millions of Windows users tried to log onto Skype at the same time, after downloading a software update from Microsoft Corp. and rebooting their machines. Many people had problems logging on early Thursday morning and were unable to connect until Saturday.

Whether the free week's service will keep paying customers from dropping the peer-to-peer VoIP service remains to be seen. The interruption was a major inconvenience for business users, although some took the service failure in stride.

Joyce Brecknell, program director at Freeform Dynamics Ltd., is a paying Skype customer and a "big user of VoIP service, both professionally and privately."

"I know where Skype works and where it still has some limitations," she said. "My expectation of VoIP is that it's still a backup service. I have multiple communication channels -- like my mobile phone -- just in case."