Skype is reporting continuing problems after a near-total collapse on 23 December. The outage left millions of people unable to use the internet service. Although some people still cannot log on, chief executive Tony Bates has assured users the service is gradually recovering, and the company is currently at around 90 percent of normal user volume. Skype will offer around 30 minutes of credit in Skype vouchers to prepay customers and a week's extra subscription to postpaid customers inconvenienced by the outage. Bates says engineers had stabilised Skype's core functionality, IM, audio and video services, but it would take longer to restore offline IM and group video calling. Skype explained that the outage was caused by a lack of computers known as 'supernodes' and that engineers had created new 'mega-supernodes' in a bid to get the service up and running again.
