With the rise of internet-enabled instant messaging or interpersonal communications services, these have abandoned interconnection, moving away from the open philosophy of the internet. Due to the negative competitive and practical implications, there's recently been increasing pressure for reestablishing the interoperability of these services. The thesis explores and presents possible ways of implementing this interoperability in the light of the diversity of these services, which is also the most important contribution of this thesis, as this has not been done before systematically. Among the main contributions is a classification of different interoperability architectures and access models and policies. In addition, the governance, security, privacy and other aspects of these ways of implementation are analysed. Finally, an example of a possible implementation is given, with a focus on the architecture and protocols, taking into account and following the theoretical findings.
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