BYON (Bring Your Own Number)
BYON lets you bring your own Plivo phone number and connect it to the voice AI platform instead of renting one.
BYON stands for Bring Your Own Number. On ThinnestAI, BYON means importing a phone number you already have with Plivo, instead of renting a number from the platform directly — you keep paying Plivo directly and ThinnestAI charges ₹0 for the import. This is important for Indian deployments because of DLT (TRAI) registration requirements, and for teams that already have a carrier relationship they want to keep.
Why BYON matters in India
Indian phone numbers have TRAI DLT registration requirements for commercial use. If your business already has a DLT-registered Plivo number, you can import it into ThinnestAI via BYON instead of going through the DLT registration flow again.
BYON vs rent-from-platform
If you are just starting out and do not already have a phone number, it is simpler to rent from the platform for ₹250/mo. BYON is better when you already have a Plivo number, bulk pricing, specific compliance requirements, or a number that is already on your DLT registration.
Supported BYON carrier on ThinnestAI
Plivo import is supported natively — you keep paying Plivo directly and ThinnestAI charges ₹0 for the import.
More definitions
A voice AI agent is an AI system that holds real-time spoken conversations via phone, web or SIP — combining speech recognition, an LLM and speech synthesis.
Voice AI is the umbrella term for AI that understands and generates human speech in real time — powering voice assistants, phone agents and translation.
Conversational AI is the category of AI that interacts with humans in natural language across chat, voice, email and messaging — using NLU, LLMs and tools.
IVR is a rigid scripted tree (press 1 for sales). Voice AI is a natural-language agent that understands free-form speech, reasons and calls tools.
BYOK lets you bring your own LLM, STT and TTS API keys so a voice AI platform routes usage through your own provider accounts instead of billing it through the platform.
SIP trunking lets a voice AI platform send and receive phone calls over the internet, connecting to the PSTN via a carrier like Twilio or Vobiz.