New media services need interoperability and portability

Abstract

For telephone services, service providers have arranged that users from different providers can communicate with each other. Also, when changing from one provider to another, it is possible to retain your telephone number. These things are possible because of ‘interconnection’ and ‘number portability’. Interconnection and (number) portability are not arranged for Internet services such as social networks, messaging services or mobile application services. This creates high exit barriers when changing to another provider for a similar service. In this paper it is made clear that interoperability and portability can play an important role for various Internet services.