What Is IDA?
In order to stay competitive in business, it is essential to have a choice of suppliers so that you are always able to source the best prices, and this is particularly true in the telecommunications industry where prices can fluctuate considerably between providers every month for landline and mobile calls. Therefore, having a choice of telecommunications providers can offer significant cost savings for any business, but it is having the power to choose which calls to send to each provider that is an extremely valuable commodity – that is where IDA can help.
IDA is an abbreviation of Indirect Access, which is a solution that allows a business to decide which network their telephone calls should be routed to. The Indirect Access service is facilitated by a 4 or 5 digit access code that is prefixed to the telephone number that is being dialled, and the access code will dictate the provider that the call is routed to. This service gives the power to decide which supplier that every single call that they make is routed to.
Typically, the IDA codes would be uploaded with the telephone numbers into a dialler within a call centre, but an IDA code can also be programmed into a PBX, which means that Indirect Access can be used by both large and small businesses. For example, if one provider had the lowest price for mobile calls, whilst another provider had the lowest price for landline calls, a business could simply prefix all 07 numbers with one IDA code, and 01/02 calls with another code before uploading the data to the dialler. This way, the business could ensure that they only pay the best rates for the telephone calls that they are making in order to save money.
Using Indirect Access doesn’t mean that a business has to change their existing supplier of lines and calls to take advantage of the benefits of IDA. The way in which the technology works is that a business can retain their existing provider, but when using IDA codes in order to make outbound calls, these calls will be billed by the provider that routes these calls – meaning that a business could realistically receive several bills when using Indirect Access.
Overall, Indirect Access gives businesses fantastic options for routing all of their telephone calls, particularly in order to save money on their telecommunications. Indirect Access is simple to use and very easy to implement for businesses of all sizes.