WASHINGTON ― Mandy Martin, a 40-year-old woman living in Louisiana, talks to her husband on the phone for about an hour a day. “I’ve tried to talk to him to tell him, ‘look, we really need to cut down on these phone calls,’” Martin said of her husband who is serving a 5-year sentence for theft. But over the next few decades, private phone providers sent rates and fees skyrocketing. In October 2015, the FCC voted 3-2 to cap state and federal prison phone rates at 11 cents a minute, and jail rates at 14 to 22 cents a minute. (The agency did, however, defend the FCC’s authority to regulate interstate calls, which refers to calls between states.)

Source: Huffington Post August 09, 2017 22:07 UTC