FCC Flooded with Comments Over Delay in Prison Phone Rate Caps
Hundreds of copy-paste comments urge FCC to fully implement the Martha Wright-Reed Act.
WASHINGTON, July 10, 2025 – Nearly 1,000 public comments have poured into the Federal Communications Commission’s docket since Monday, protesting the agency’s decision to delay enforcement of rules designed to help incarcerated people connect with their loved ones.
The outpouring comes in response to the FCC signaling on June 30 that it would delay until April 1, 2027 enforcement of rules that were adopted in 2024 to lower the cost of phone and video calls from prisons. Congress directed the FCC to implement the rules in 2022; they supposedly took effect for larger prisons on January 1, 2025 and smaller jails on April 1.
Hundreds of commenters submitted a coordinated message that “the FCC's sudden reversal of its position on regulations passed unanimously in 2024 [was] plainly shameful.” The widely copied message “urge[d] the FCC, under the leadership of Chairman Brendan Carr, to reconsider pausing the implementation of the new regulations on correctional communication services,” saying, “Families need relief now.”
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The message continues: “Any decision to delay these well-reasoned regulations is a move to protect special interests.”
“There are no harmful ‘unintended consequences,’ only malicious manipulations by the industry and their agency partners to protect the status quo. The FCC must not fall for them and abandon more than a decade of its work. Families cannot wait any longer, they need relief now.”
The FCC’s prison rate caps were put in place to make it more affordable for incarcerated people, some of whom earn as little as $1 per hour, to stay in touch with their families.
The rules capped the cost prison telecom providers could charge inmates for a phone and video call and would have dropped the price of a 15-minute phone call in some large jails from $11.35 to $0.90, according to the FCC.
The FCC’s sole Democratic Commissioner Anna Gomez spoke out against the Bureau-level decision to delay the rules, calling it “indefensible” that the agency had chosen “to ignore both the law and the will of Congress.”
While many of the comments repeated a shared message, others added personal touches.
One commenter Heather Kelly, said she was “an attorney who works with incarcerated people,” and had been “heartened” when the FCC initially issued the new regulations capping fees in 2024.
“I believe that prison needs to be a place where opportunities for rehabilitation occur. Therefore, it is important that families have many opportunities to stay in touch with one another and at a minimal cost to them, especially when there are minor children. I am concerned that the FCC is delaying the implementation of the new regulations,” said another commenter Gretchen McDevittis.
“Reversing course now not only defies the law; it defies our shared moral values,” said commenter Charlene Walker. “Stop kowtowing to the current administration. The critical question here is whether outright bribery is at stake, because we know that the corporations exploiting family pain are consistent lobbyists and donors.”
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