A system and method for enabling the operation of intervendor and intravendor messaging service systems within an operator network includes correctly routing data messages and handshaking messages between the various system components. In one aspect, the present invention uses the uniform resource identifier of a particular messaging system to route one or more handshaking messages from a target terminal to the particular messaging system. In another aspect, the present invention uses a message transaction identification embedded in the handshaking message to direct the handshaking message to the correct messaging service system. In one embodiment, the transaction identification is analyzed by a load balancing switch to determine the location of the particular messaging service system. In another embodiment, one or more of the several messaging service systems in the operator network are used to analyze the transaction identification to determine the location of the particular messaging service system.
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