February 8, 2008... "The Year of the Rat" bites Skype.

China has been celebrating this week, and they are not logged onto Skype. My fellow blogger at "OnlyeBay" just wrote to me saying "It's as if China has disappeared. The peak is still very similar (given it is comprised of Europe and US but the trough is more than 1 million lower and the China hump is completely missing." Now, this can only be two things. 1 - Chinese new year and people are on holiday. or 2 - China has managed to block some voip traffic somehow. "

This is an astute observation. Specific events around the world affect Skype usage in peculiar ways. In this case, just as the Chinese were celebrating there was a large dropoff during eastern China's workday, and the familar "hump" in the middle of the day disappeared completely. Without Asian Skype usage, the shape of the curve at that time of day reflects only Europe as it wakes up and America as it goes to bed.

As for other explanations, I don't think Skype is being blocked sigificantly but I do wonder whether the winter weather in rural parts of China is affecting the availability of electricity (which of course would affect Internet usage. In fact there have been reports of electricity outages across China this week.

If I had the time, I would use this event to help me "see" the Asian and/or Chinese data in the larger Skype cloud. Without further study, I suspect the data would confirm my earlier observations about the number and habits of Skype users in Asia... which is measured and posted here continuously.