The FCC won’t enforce a ban on ‘exorbitant’ prison phone call prices

The Federal Communications Commission will suspend the enforcement of a rule that would lower the price of prison phone and video calls. On Monday, the Trump-appointed FCC Chair Brendan Carr announced that prisons won’t have to comply with the pricing rules until April 1st, 2027, reversing plans to apply the caps this year.

Family members and friends of incarcerated people have long been charged fees the FCC described in 2024 as “exorbitant” to keep in touch with phone or video calls. Though some states — like Connecticut, California, Minnesota, and Massachusetts — have made phone calls from prison free, the majority of states allow fees that can reach as high as $11.35 for a 15-minute phone call, often including kickbacks to the jails and local governments.

On Monday, however, the FCC declared it will hold off on enforcing these rules for two more years. In his announcement, Carr says that the efforts to regulate prison phone calls are “leading to negative, unintended consequences,” claiming that the rules would make the caps “too low” to cover “required safety measures” and wouldn’t give states enough time to find another source of funds. He adds that the decision to delay these rules is supposed to ensure that “important safety and security protocols are maintained,” which he indicates could include the adoption of public safety tools with “advanced AI and machine learning.” Carr partially voted to approve the phone call caps in 2024.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez slammed Carr’s decision to pause the implementation of the Martha Wright-Reed Act. “Rather than enforce the law, the Commission is now stalling, shielding a broken system that inflates costs and rewards kickbacks to correctional facilities at the expense of incarcerated individuals and their loved ones,” Gomez said in a statement. “It’s time for the FCC to do its job. Its responsibility is not to protect profit-driven contracts — it is to uphold the law and serve the public.”