Page "Instant messaging" Paragraph 21

However, while discussions at IETF were stalled, Reuters signed the first inter-service provider connectivity agreement on September 2003.

This agreement enabled AIM, ICQ and MSN Messenger users to talk with Reuters Messaging counterparts and vice-versa.

Following this, Microsoft, Yahoo!

and AOL agreed to a deal in which Microsoft's Live Communications Server 2005 users would also have the possibility to talk to public instant messaging users.

This deal established SIP / SIMPLE as a standard for protocol interoperability and established a connectivity fee for accessing public instant messaging groups or services.