When Skype Skipped Out

Before I say anything else, I have a confession. I am not a user of Skype. This puts me in a minority among VAs, since most of the ones I know use it, many raving about it.

So, when Skype went down last month it took me a while to even hear about it. Once I did, well, frankly it wasn't all that big a deal in my mind. No communications service runs completely without interruption. Any that tell you they do, well, they're probably lying. If it was a landline, or cable-based, I doubt there would have been as much fuss. It probably would have also taken longer to fix.

For more information about the specifics of the Skype outage, check out these articles:

Skype Works Again For Some - written during the outage

Skype's Back But For How Long? - written after the service was back up

I have a lot of issues with the assertions made about the future of Skype in the second article, starting with the note above about service outages in communications in general.

Considering that Skype had never before had a major outage, unlike all the other major VoIP providers, is a single outage really likely to kill them? Unlikely.

Are businesses really likely to lose faith in Skype? Again, no more so than any other provider.

Which brings me to the real point of all this: ALWAYS HAVE A COMMUNICATIONS BACKUP.

No business, even a home-based one, should rely on a single method for communicating with their clients and suppliers. Phones, mobile phones, and the Internet should all be part of your communication strategy. If you have VoIP, definitely make sure you have a backup. But of course, you've already done that... Right?