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Hey Fring, AT&T understands; iPhone owners bring Skype support to its knees

The Apple iPhone is an extremely popular device that has done its fair share of causing service overloads on AT&T and now Fring is feeling this pain as those making Skype video calls overloaded their servers. Skype service with Fring has been temporarily shut down to deal with this issue.
Written by Matthew Miller, Contributing Writer

I have been using Fring for a few years on my Nokia smartphones and last fall I even made a video call via Fring from a Nokia N97 mini to a friend on Skype via his desktop. Fring had a client available for the Sprint EVO 4G just after launch (check out Joel's experiences) and I have been using it via 3G, 4G, and WiFi. Last week Fring launched a client for the iPhone that allows two-way video calling over the 3G data network, but it seems that Fring has overloading problems like we often see on AT&T and Fring had to take actions to shut off support for Skype for all Fring users.

It is great to see Fring support the iPhone 4 since it should expand the number of people I can hold video calls with, but I would rather have a working client with Skype support than more iPhone users on the network. Support for Skype was a major reason I use Fring over clients like Qik because it allows me to call family and friends who are on Skype with their laptop or desktop. Fring states this is a temporary reduction, but I haven't seen anything on when they might have servers back up to support Skype.

You can still make Fring-to-Fring calls between Symbian, iPhone, and Android owners so maybe this is a way to get more people to adopt Fring as a video call client. Have you tried using Fring on your supported smartphone?

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