BYON (Bring Your Own Number)
BYON lets you bring your own phone number — via Twilio, Vobiz or Exotel — and connect it to the voice AI platform via SIP instead of renting one.
BYON stands for Bring Your Own Number. In voice AI, BYON lets you use phone numbers you already have — via Twilio, Vobiz, Exotel or any other carrier — with the voice AI platform, instead of renting a number from the platform directly. This is important for Indian deployments because of DLT (TRAI) registration requirements, and for enterprises that already have a carrier relationship they want to keep. ThinnestAI supports BYON via SIP trunk integration.
Why BYON matters in India
Indian phone numbers have TRAI DLT registration requirements for commercial use. If your business already has DLT-registered numbers on Twilio, Vobiz or another Indian carrier, you can plug them 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 phone numbers, it is simpler to rent from the platform. BYON is better when you have existing carrier relationships, bulk pricing, specific compliance requirements, or numbers that are already on your DLT registration.
Supported BYON carriers on ThinnestAI
Twilio (global) and Vobiz (India) BYON are supported natively. Exotel SIP trunk BYON is available on request.
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 — the voice AI platform routes usage through your accounts instead of bundling provider costs.
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.