Is Skype quality getting worse?

Skype ranks as one of my all-time favorite web programs. For those who have never heard this name or weren't sure what it is about, Skype allows you to make voice and or video calls from your computer to another Internet connected computer anywhere in the world for free. Skype also offers extremely low pricing for making computer to land line or cell phone calls as well.

I use Skype to communicate with my brother in Arizona, but over the past few months we have noticed a significant change in the quality of the calls. Neither of us has changed our Internet service or computer setups, so Skype is definitely the culprit. We both noted that Skype usage seems to be climbing. At almost any time we use Skype, we note that between 10 and 13 million other Skype users are online. Whether the vast number of users contributes to the problems we experience or not, it still makes a mind boggling statistic.

It used to be that we could make our video calls and talk for anywhere from 15 minutes to 90 minutes and not have any problems with call quality, dropped calls or video problems. However, over the past six months our calls are frequently dropped, suffer from extremely poor audio, or one of us will lose the audio from the other. Every fifth or sixth call, we will experience good quality again, but good quality calls are quickly becoming rare.

We both are using the current version of the Skype software and try not to run any other programs in the background as we talk...except maybe our browsers. We both fill out the How did we do? surveys after a failed call, but the problems continue to exacerbate.

I would love to hear from other Skype users out there:

How often do you use Skype? Are you experiencing good quality calls, poor quality calls or both? If poor, how often and what type of problems do you have? Are you a Mac Skyper, Linux Skyper, or Windows Skyper? How fast is your connection? Do you have any tips for making better use of Skype?

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think of Skype and please answer some of these questions as well. I'm curious.

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