{"id":4195,"date":"2016-03-17T08:00:04","date_gmt":"2016-03-17T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=4195"},"modified":"2025-02-06T16:04:13","modified_gmt":"2025-02-06T21:04:13","slug":"fccexpect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2016\/03\/17\/fccexpect\/","title":{"rendered":"What families can expect from the new FCC rules"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"updated\">March 24, 2016: The federal courts have issued another stay of the FCC&#8217;s order. Please see our <a href=\"\/blog\/2016\/03\/24\/charges_to_expect\/\">new blog post<\/a> for what to expect. <\/p>\n<p>The Federal Communications Commission&#8217;s historic October 2015 order expanding its regulations of the prison and jail telephone industry goes into effect today. It&#8217;s a little complicated because prisons and jails have different effective dates, and part of the FCC&#8217;s order has been stayed by the federal courts. And on March 16, the FCC issued a <a href=\"\/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/phones\/filings\/60001503232.pdf\">public notice<\/a> &#8212; which if the companies stay true to form, they are likely to challenge in court &#8212; reminding the companies that in-state calls are also to be capped.  Barring new rulings from the court, here is what the families of incarcerated people can expect. <\/p>\n<h3>For prisons, starting today:<\/h3>\n<p>Both in-state and inter-state calls are capped at a maximum of $0.21-$0.25\/minute for debit\/prepaid or collect, respectively. (A 15-minute collect call that cost $6 in Arizona yesterday will cost only $3.60 today.<a href=\"#blognote\">(*)<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>The abusive hidden fees that our report <a href=\"\/phones\/pleasedeposit.html\">Please Deposit All of Your Money: Kickbacks, Rates, and Hidden Fees in the Jail Phone Industry<\/a> found can easily double the price of a call are now capped:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Payment by phone or website: $3 (previously up to $10)<\/li>\n<li>Payment via live operator: $5.95 (previously up to $10)<\/li>\n<li>Paper bills: $2 (previously up to $3.49)<\/li>\n<li>Markups and hidden fees embedded within Western Union and MoneyGram payments: $0 (previously up to $6.95)<\/li>\n<li>Markups and hidden profits on mandatory taxes and regulatory fees: $0 (We&#8217;ve seen these markups and hidden profits on &#8220;mandatory&#8221; taxes be 25% of the cost of the call)<\/li>\n<li>All other ancillary fees: $0. (There are many of these charges. Some of the most egregious ones are $10 fees for refunds, $2.50\/month for &#8220;network infrastructure&#8221; and a 4% charge for &#8220;validation&#8221;.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>For jails, starting June 20, 2016:<\/h3>\n<p>Both in-state and inter-state calls are capped at a maximum of $0.21-$0.25\/minute depending on whether the call is debit or collect. (A 15-minute call that today costs $12.75 in Alameda County, California will cost no more than $3.15 (debit) or $3.75 (collect) on June 20th. A 15-minute call today that costs $14+ in Livingston and Mecosta counties, Michigan and Dodge, Kewaunee, and Walworth counties, Wisconsin will cost no more than $3.15 or $3.75 on June 20th.)<\/p>\n<p>The caps on the abusive fees discussed above will go into effect for calls from jails on June 20th.<\/p>\n<h3>After the court&#8217;s partial stay on the FCC order is lifted <\/h3>\n<p>Assuming that the federal court lifts its partial stay and the FCC&#8217;s October order goes fully into effect at a later date, families can expect to see the following results:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In prisons, the cost of a call will drop to $0.11 a minute.\n<\/li>\n<li>In jails, the cost of a debit\/prepaid call will fall to $0.14 to $0.22 a minute, depending on the size of the jail.  (Traditional collect calls will initially be higher and then, over a two year period, fall to the $0.14-0.22 level.)\n<\/li>\n<li>For both prisons and jails, the companies will be prohibited from defying the FCC&#8217;s rate caps by steering families to abusive <a href=\"\/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/phones\/filings\/60001013052.pdf\">&#8220;single call&#8221;<\/a> products like Text2Connect&trade; and PayNow&trade; that charge $9.99-$14.99 for a single call.\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Court has not set a schedule for the case yet, so we do not know when the partial stay might be lifted.<\/p>\n<p><b>International calling and advanced communication services<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The FCC also sought comments on regulating international calling and advanced communications services like <a href=\"\/visitation\/\">video visitation<\/a> and <a href=\"\/messaging\/\">email<\/a>, so the FCC is likely considering regulations of those services as well. The comment period closed in January, and we do not know when the FCC will rule on those issues.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p id=\"blognote\"><b>Notes:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>*<\/b> The maximum 15-minute collect call charge allowed under the new rules is $3.75, but Arizona\u2019s in-state collect calls are going to cost $3.60 because of a quirk in how Arizona&#8217;s pricing was set up. Previously, Arizona had a high first minute charge and then charged $0.24 a minute. Arizona is choosing to lower the first minute charge to comply with the FCC rules, but isn&#8217;t raising the per minute charge. We chose the Arizona example for this post because we knew that that state had in-state collect call rates much higher than the new caps and because Arizona was willing to confirm their then-existing rates. Some other states, like Mississippi, did not respond to repeated requests to confirm the rates charged to families in their state.<\/p>\n<p><b>Update March 18, 2016:<\/b> Yesterday, Mississippi finally sent us enough information to determine their new and old rates. Prior to this week, a 15 minute call cost $5.90 ($2.60 to connect plus $0.22\/minute). That same call now costs $1.65, because the connect charge was eliminated and Mississippi choose to adopt the $0.11\/minute rate required by the FCC but stayed by the court. The press release gives a hint as to why Mississippi made that decision: &#8220;&#8216;We receive constant complaints from inmate family members and others regarding the high cost for phone service,&#8217; Commissioner Marshall Fisher said. &#8216;This decision will significantly reduce expenses to the families.'&#8221; The Mississippi Department of Corrections deserves credit for doing the right thing here and we hope other states will follow.<\/p>\n<p><b>Update March 23, 2016:<\/b> The FCC has posted a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fcc.gov\/consumers\/guides\/inmate-telephone-service\">guide<\/a> to the new rules along with instructions on how to file overcharging complaints.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We explain what rates and fees to expect thanks to the FCC&#8217;s October 2015 order and when for prisons and jails. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[11],"class_list":["post-4195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phones","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4195"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17093,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4195\/revisions\/17093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4195"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}