Skype says phone glitch is fixed

Skype said its Internet phone service had returned to normal after a software bug left many users unable to log on for two days.

The company, a division of online auction company EBay Inc., said it would explain what caused the problem in more detail today.

“Until then, we’d like to apologize and thank you. Precisely in that order,” the company told its customers in a posting on its Heartbeat blog Saturday. “We know how difficult and frustrating the past two days have been. And still, your good wishes kept flowing in.”

An estimated 220 million people worldwide use the Luxembourg-based Skype service, which enables its users to make long-distance phone calls over the Internet.

The worldwide outage began Thursday. Users from countries including Vietnam, Brazil, Germany and the U.S. said they could not log on and make phone calls or send instant messages. Skype said the issue was a problem with its software.

Skype, founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, uses peer-to-peer technology to connect phone calls, instant messages and videos between its users. It runs on a variety of operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, PocketPC and Linux.

Besides making computer-to-computer calls, Skype also connects cellphones and land-line telephones.