Provider Securus wants the same relief from interim...

Provider Securus wants the same relief from interim inmate calling service (ICS) rate caps as Pay-Tel got, Securus said in a petition to the FCC filed Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1ffVeIv). The FCC approved a nine-month waiver of its caps for Pay-Tel after that ICS provider said it couldn’t recover its costs on a holding company level if it were required to charge such low rates, because of rate restrictions in several states that require Pay-Tel to provide service at below-average-cost rates (CD Feb 13 p14). The waiver “should apply to all ICS providers operating at jails in Pay Tel’s territory,” Securus said. “All of those carriers are subject to the same ‘below-average-cost intrastate rate constraints’ as Pay Tel, and they all face the same challenges in serving city and county jails.” Securus asked that the commission let all ICS providers serving jails in Pay-Tel’s 13-state service territory get the relief Pay-Tel got: being able to charge up to 46 cents per minute for interstate calls. Securus also asked for permission to add a 2 cent-per-minute fee to its interstate calls in order to cover the cost of providing “voice biometric technology” required for secure inmate calling (http://bit.ly/1fD4Oju).