Skype outage hits 220 million users

Skype, the online phone company, was today working to fix an outage that left its 220 million users unable to make cheap calls over the internet.

The company said this morning that it was still working to resolve the problem, which was apparently caused by a fault in its software that means users could not log on to the service.

"It is still too early to call out anything definite yet we are now seeing signs of improvement, and we continue to monitor the situation through Europe waking up this morning," a statement on Skype's blog said.