Patent ID: 7114004

Claim:
A premium messaging exchange system, comprising: a list of destinations supported by the premium messaging exchange system, each record in said list of destinations comprising a specified destination, and a supporting external messaging system enabled to establish a communicative link with said specified destination, to format data so that said data can be processed at said specified destination, and to transmit said data once formatted to said specified destination according to a protocol recognized by said specified destination; and, an interface to said list of destinations which can be accessed by querying external messaging systems and through which supporting external messaging systems can be identified for specific destination addresses provided by said querying external messaging systems through said interface to said querying external messaging system; and an originating external messaging system configured to receive reguests to route data to specified destinations and to query said list of destinations through said interface to determine whether said specified destination can be processed in another external messaging system, if yes, first routing said data to said another external messaging system, said another external messaging system routing said data directly to said specified destination, if no, second routing said data directly to said specified destination without assistance from said another external messaging system.