bring your own bandwidth (BYOB)

Bring your own bandwidth (BYOB) is a voice communications service in which a business purchases the voice services only and uses their own internet connection from their existing internet service provider (ISP) to host the voice service.

BYOB is common in VoIP, cloud services and AI services. Excluding telecom providers that have added other services to their offerings, most service providers are not in the position to offer their own connectivity.

In many cloud services, the performance of the service is highly dependent on the speed of the connection used to connect to the service. Due to the speed dependency, many have a recommended list of providers. If there is no issue with a connection’s speed, the customer would use the internet connection they already had – or bring their own bandwidth. This connection might be through an ISP or through their IT provider.

Supporters of BYOB insist that the flexibility of choosing their own ISP allows businesses to have more control and reduce costs, which can be especially beneficial for small to mid-sized businesses. Opponents of BYOB argue that because a voice provider can’t control a business’s internet connection, there’s no way it can provide Quality of Service (QoS). Using BYOB may hinder the real-time communication of a phone call and a hitch in connection can cause jitter and latency.

BYOB also stands for build your own broadband.