Definition · AI Receptionists
BYOC (bring your own carrier)
Also known as: BYOC, bring your own carrier, bring your own telephony
BYOC (bring your own carrier) lets a business connect its existing phone-service provider or SIP trunk to a software platform instead of buying telephony from the platform itself. It keeps current numbers and carrier rates while routing calls through the platform's features — separating the software fee from the telephony cost.
BYOC matters most on developer-grade voice platforms and AI receptionists that price the software separately from the phone minutes. Normally a platform resells telephony (numbers and per-minute carrier costs) bundled into its rates. With BYOC, you point your own carrier or SIP trunk at the platform: the platform handles the AI, routing, and logic, while the actual call transport runs on your carrier contract.
The reason a buyer cares is cost and continuity. Keeping an existing carrier means keeping established numbers and any negotiated minute rates, and avoiding a markup on telephony. But it shifts the per-minute carrier cost onto your own bill, which a like-for-like comparison must add back — a platform's low "software-only" fee isn't the all-in cost if telephony is on you.
For a buyer, the BYOC questions are: does the platform support it (and on which tier), what carriers or SIP standards it accepts, and what the true combined cost is once your own telephony and the platform fee are summed.