Abstract: A distributed service management system for providing communication services comprises a plurality of individual service management systems operated by a plurality of different service providers. Each service management system includes its own local database and an Interactive Distributed Transaction Monitor (IDTM) that allows locally running applications to access the local database as well as remote databases belonging to remotely located service management systems. The interfaces serve to integrate multiple individual service management systems into a single multidatabase transaction management system. The distributed service management system can be used to provide special personal communication services involving multiple service providers, such as call forwarding to a temporarily rented mobile telephone.