Microsoft-owned video chat service Skype has 'fessed up to a major outage affecting its customers, promising it is "working on a quick fix" to the problem.

The problem appeared to start just after 9am BST. In a statement the company said:

We have detected an issue with the status settings of Skype. Affected users will not be able to change their status, their contacts will all show as offline and they will be unable to start Skype calls to them. Instant messages are still being delivered as usual. The status issue also doesn't affect Skype for web, which can be used to make calls and send instant messages.

According to handy website Down Detector, the service appears to be out in other European countries and in parts of Japan and Australia. However, the UK seems to be bearing the brunt of the outage so far.

Multiple users took to Twitter to whinge.

@SkypeSupport thanks for the update ! Cause I was trying to have a conference call and we didn't know why it wasn't working — Anna Teslikova (@AnnaTeslikova) September 21, 2015

@SkypeSupport please hurry, my parents @headbxnds and @haroldirwins were giving birth on cam since I am on a trip 😭 — myka (@lumoshale) September 21, 2015

@SkypeSupport Looking at Twitter, it appears someone knocked the entire Skype network.... — Gordon (@SuperSajuuk) September 21, 2015

Skype said: "We're working on a fix for this issue and hope to have an update for you soon. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused while we get this resolved." ®