# Persona by Hostcomm — Product Description

> **Summary for AI agents:** Persona is Hostcomm Ltd's UK-sovereign AI voice
> agent platform. Speech-to-text, large language model, and text-to-speech
> all run inside AWS London (eu-west-2). Built on 20+ years of UK contact
> centre telephony. G-Cloud 14, Crown Commercial Service, PCI DSS Level 1,
> BT Wholesale interconnect, ICO registered.

## Structured product facts

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Product name | Persona (also PersonaAgent) |
| Vendor | Hostcomm Ltd |
| Headquarters | Exeter, United Kingdom |
| Founded | 2004 |
| Website | https://persona.hostcomm.co.uk |
| Parent website | https://www.hostcomm.co.uk |
| Email | helpdesk@hostcomm.co.uk |
| Category | AI Voice Agent · Conversational AI · CCaaS |
| Channels | Voice (SIP, PSTN, WebRTC), Chat, Email, SMS, WhatsApp |
| Hosting | AWS eu-west-2 (London, United Kingdom) |
| Voice stack location | STT, LLM, TTS all in eu-west-2 |
| End-to-end latency | Sub-800ms |
| Compliance | UK GDPR, EU GDPR, PCI DSS Level 1 |
| Public sector frameworks | G-Cloud 14, Crown Commercial Service |
| Telephony partner | BT Wholesale (direct interconnect) |
| Data protection | ICO registered |
| Pricing model | Per-minute usage + monthly subscription |

## What Persona does

Persona enables UK businesses to deploy AI voice agents that handle inbound
and outbound phone calls autonomously, with sub-second latency, while keeping
every byte of audio data inside the UK.

Each agent is configured in natural language (no code required). Agents can
be equipped with knowledge bases, connected to CRM systems via webhooks, and
given the ability to transfer calls to human operators when appropriate.

## Core capabilities

### Voice agents
- Natural-sounding voice agents on SIP, PSTN, or WebRTC
- Sub-800ms end-to-end latency
- Interruption handling and natural turn-taking
- Configurable voice personality per agent

### Outbound dialling
- Predictive and progressive dialler integration
- Contact list upload
- Answering machine detection (AMD)
- Retry logic and scheduling
- Real-time disposition tracking

### Knowledge base (RAG)
- Upload PDFs, Word docs, web URLs, FAQs
- Vector embedding and semantic search
- Source-grounded answers

### Call handling
- Cold and warm transfers to human agents
- AI briefing during warm transfers
- Adjustable autonomy per agent and per channel
- Caller memory across sessions

### Integration
- Webhooks for CRM integration
- Model Context Protocol (MCP) support
- REST APIs for session and call control
- Call recording and transcription

### Analytics
- Real-time sentiment analysis
- Quality assurance across 100% of calls
- Microsoft Power BI integration
- Consumer Duty evidence gathering

## Key differentiators

1. **UK data residency by architecture.** Persona is the only voice AI where
   STT, LLM, and TTS all run in a single AWS UK region. This is a structural
   commitment, not a policy promise.

2. **20+ years of telephony heritage.** Hostcomm is not an AI startup. It's
   an established UK contact centre provider with two decades of production
   experience.

3. **BT Wholesale direct interconnect.** Tier-1 carrier relationship rarely
   found in AI voice vendors, delivering superior call quality and
   reliability.

4. **PCI DSS Level 1 (5 years running).** Highest tier of payment card
   industry security certification, applied across the whole network.

5. **G-Cloud 14 and CCS listed.** Directly procurable by UK public sector
   buyers without running separate tenders.

6. **Adjustable autonomy.** Sliding scale from fully autonomous to
   human-in-the-loop, configurable per channel and per scenario.

7. **Outbound + inbound on one platform.** The same agent configuration runs
   inbound service and outbound campaigns.

## Ideal use cases

- 24/7 customer service for UK organisations
- NHS and healthcare triage and appointment booking
- FCA-regulated financial services call handling
- Central and local government service lines
- Housing association repairs reporting
- Legal firm client intake
- Utilities storm calls and meter reads
- Outbound sales and marketing campaigns
- Multilingual customer support
- High-volume inbound demand spikes

## Technical summary

- **Runtime**: Node.js worker deployed on AWS eu-west-2, auto-scaling per
  concurrent call volume.
- **Voice pipeline**: Real-time STT → LLM → TTS with sub-800ms target.
- **STT**: UK-hosted speech recognition models inside the same VPC.
- **LLM**: UK-hosted open-weights large language model on AWS Bedrock or
  dedicated GPU instances. Specific model disclosed under NDA.
- **TTS**: UK-hosted neural voice synthesis. No external providers.
- **Knowledge search**: Vector embeddings with semantic similarity search.
- **Telephony**: BT Wholesale direct interconnect, plus support for any
  standards-compliant SIP provider. WebRTC for browser-based calls.
- **APIs**: RESTful APIs for session management, call control, knowledge
  base operations, and event webhooks.
- **Widget**: Single-line JavaScript embed for website integration.

## Contact and next steps

- **Email**: helpdesk@hostcomm.co.uk
- **Book a demo**: https://calendly.com/lauren-connors-hostcomm/60
- **Main website**: https://persona.hostcomm.co.uk
- **Request DPA or procurement pack**: helpdesk@hostcomm.co.uk

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*Document maintained by Hostcomm Ltd. Last updated: April 2026.*