My son has been calling us long distance - I'm assuming it's the .23 a minute. Or $3.45 for a 15 min call (he said he's charged 15 min whether he talks for 2 min or the entire time...) That's $41.40 a month. Would a local cell be better? Or somewhere I read about a service that would set you up w/ a local number that gets patched to your house for a fee. Is that allowed? Anyone know? Thanks!

In the BOP when I was there it was rounded to the minute (61 seconds would be 2 minutes) but he should not be charged a full 15 minutes per call. You can get a local cell phone which is forwarded to your home or cell phone which would significantly reduce his costs. He will still get only 300 minutes except for November and December in which they allow 400 minutes.

It's against BOP rules for calls to be forwarded. And he shouldn't be charged for the whole 15 minutes if he doesn't talk that long! Getting a cell with a number local to the prison seems to work for some folks. Make sure cell numbers are allowed to be approved at the prison. Z.

My son has been calling us long distance - I'm assuming it's the .23 a minute. Or $3.45 for a 15 min call (he said he's charged 15 min whether he talks for 2 min or the entire time...) That's $41.40 a month. Would a local cell be better? Or somewhere I read about a service that would set you up w/ a local number that gets patched to your house for a fee. Is that allowed? Anyone know? Thanks!

Get Vonage and sign up for a virtual local number. You can keep your current number as the main number.

Thanks for the advice. I think I'll check out Vonage.

Prepaid through the BOP is THE cheapest way to go and as Susan said it's still only 300 minutes per month.(With the exceptions of Nov and Dec) You can have him call your cell as long as he puts that on his phone list, but he would NOT be able to call the cell collect!