Millions of Skype users worldwide unable to make calls

Millions of Skype Internet phone users worldwide couldn't make calls - or were dropped in mid-conversation - because of a network connection failure that began about 9 a.m. Wednesday PST.

It marked the second time this year that the popular, low-cost calling service was hit with a major outage, and this one was more widespread than the two-day disruption in 2007, Los Angeles Times reports.

Skype said on Thursday that it's begun to see a "significant increase" in the number of people able to connect. Because of the way the Skype software works, it's not possible for anyone to obtain an exact figure, but we now estimate it to be over 10 million," the company's head blogger Peter Parkes said in a blog post today.

At the same time, however, Skype cautioned that certain features may still be hampered by the outage which began on Wednesday - in particular, peoples' online status may update slowly; the same for the delivery of instant messages. Skype also said group video calling "will take longer to return to normal," CBS News reports.