A Conceptual Framework of Information Infrastructure Building: a Case Study of the Development of a Content Service Platform for Mobile Phones in Norway

As the result of a steady increase in reach, range and processing capabilities, information technologies no longer appear as independent, but rather as integrated, parts of largescale networks. These networks offer a shared resource for information delivery and exchange to communities that appropriate them for their respective purposes. Knowledge and understanding of such information infrastructures’ development process, in particular of how to engage in and proceed to build them over time, are in short supply. We therefore need to develop and strengthen our theoretical understanding of the process by which information infrastructures are built. The aims of this thesis are thus to: (i) develop a conceptual framework to understand the process of building information infrastructures as evolution and construction, and (ii) provide practical insights and guidance to those involved in the building of information infrastructures in the business sector of mobile content services. In order to facilitate the understanding of the process of building information infrastructures, this thesis takes as its starting point the existing conceptualisation of information infrastructures by Ciborra, Hanseth and associates and, in particular, their concepts of heterogeneity, control, standards and evolution. Their conceptualisation pictures the developments of information infrastructure as an evolutionary process which is intrinsically linked to the interplay between human and technical components, while taking into account the distinctive properties of information infrastructures. This thesis argues at the same time that this existing conceptualisation portrays information infrastructures as autonomous and under-theorises the multiplicity, the agency of, and the interrelations between information infrastructure builders and their institutional context in building processes. The empirical basis of this thesis develops an in-depth interpretive case study of the process of building an infrastructure (the Content Provider Access, or CPA) for mobile content services in Norway. This empirical research focuses on the activities of those engaged in the building process, their complex and highly political interrelations, their institutional contexts as well as the technical components and networks involved. From 2002 and until 2004, 39 interviews were conducted across 23 different involved