Rates for Interstate Inmate Calling Services

In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) reforms its rules for inmate calling services by taking the following steps. The Commission eliminates a separate rate cap for collect calling. The Commission lowers the interim interstate rate caps to $0.12 for prisons and $0.14 for jails with an average daily population of 1,000 or more incarcerated people. The Commission reforms the current treatment of site commission payments to permit recovery only of the portions of such payments related specifically to calling services and requires them to be separately listed on bills. Site commission payments that are legally mandated may be passed through to consumers, without any markup, and site commission payments that result from contractual obligations between facilities and providers are recoverable only up to $0.02 per minute for both prisons and jails with average daily populations of 1,000 incarcerated people or more. The Commission caps, for the first time, international calling rates at the applicable total interstate rate cap, plus the amount paid by the calling services provider to its underlying wholesale carriers for completing international calls. The Commission adopts a process for providers to follow when seeking waivers of the rate caps for interstate and international calling services; reforms the ancillary service third-party transaction fee caps for calls that are billed on a single per-call basis and charges for transferring or processing third- party financial transactions; adopts a new mandatory data collection; and reaffirms providers' obligations regarding functionally equivalent access for incarcerated people with hearing and speech disabilities, delegating authority to its Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau (CGB) to undertake a separate data collection to help the Commission resolve critically important disability access issues.