The high cost of Inmate Calling Services (ICS)...
The high cost of Inmate Calling Services (ICS) didn’t come up when the FCC unanimously passed rules last year to prevent unwanted third-party charges, also known as “cramming.” But those rules, and similar state requirements cracking down on the practice,…
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have made providing ICS increasingly expensive, said Securus Technologies Director-Regulatory and Government Affairs Curtis Hopfinger. In a filing Wednesday (http://bit.ly/11RTuyB), Hopfinger said that as cramming rules have become stricter, “rates for riding on a LEC bill have increased substantially.” Some LECs have started demanding penalties of $100 or more from Securus if a consumer “simply alleges” that an inmate call charge is unauthorized, he said. Virtually all investigations reveal that the inmate collect call was fully authorized, “but the LEC typically has already reversed the disputed charge back to Securus and imposed the penalty that must be paid,” Hopfinger said. Those costs get passed along to the end user in the form of higher ICS rates, he said. Site commissions -- which opponents dub “kickbacks” -- also increase the costs, he said. “Mandatory free calls would be very difficult to implement” from an operations perspective, he said, with some proposals requiring a completely new billing application and complex systems to determine which calls should be charged and which should be free. “Creating that kind of system would be next to impossible,” he said.