Skype, the free web based software based telephone service, is currently down for many of its millions upon millions of users.

Early afternoon, mid-morning for those in the Pacific Time period, many Skype users started to complain via Twitter that their service wasn't work. Shortly thereafter, the company, which has its network operated by a Luxembourg-based company called Skype Limited, addressed the concerns of its users in a tweet.

"Some of you may have problems signing in to Skype - we're investigating, and we're sorry for the disruption to your conversations," the company tweeted, while adding later, "Our engineers and site operations team are working non-stop to get things back to normal - thanks for your continued patience."

The last time Skype had an outage of this magnitude was back in 2007. The company was once a property of EBay, but the voice service company separated last year.  

"When we had Skype, we knew we had a good product, but there were no synergies between us and them," Ebay Chief Executive Officer John Donahoe said at a recent conference.

To contact the editor, e-mail: