I heard from a number of sources that the BOP (Federal Bureau of Prisons) is raising the phone rates soon.
Has anyone else heard about this?
David

Yes--effective March/2003. Local rates will increase from .05 to .07 a minute and long distance will increase from either .17 to .19 or .19 to .21 per minute.

Molly

yup, they changed phone venders, and they stink......

As someone about to go in...

Does the BOP use the same phone system at all institutions?

Anyone know what the international rates are?
My wife is in Peru. Is she gonna need special stuff on her telephone in Peru?

I hate that the phone rates will be increasing in March!! But I probably would not feel so bad about it if they would dramatically increase the allowable minutes per month from 300 min to 500 min!! The current allowable minutes per month is just not enough!

Pookie

Pookie do you have to maintain the line? I read in other threads about ladies having to constantly call the phone company to unblock their lines so that their men could call... is this the case with the federal system?

I thought that one got an account to bill against, and that collect calls were rare.

I agree Pookie 500 minutes would be great, my guy calls everyday and calls his son and his parents...Towards the end of the month our ocnversations are very quick..Hello, I love you, goodbye....lol

To answer Harncw's question, I am not sure on that. Tim does not call me collect because no matter if he calls collect or not, he is still only allowed 300 minutes total for the month. The money I send him ahead of time gets either placed on commisary account or phone account. He chooses how much he wants placed where. By doing it this way, I don't have to worry about trying to unblock my line because he never calls collect. And also, I think all Federal prisons don't use the same phone system----so that may also affect the reasons behind getting blocks and stuff. If you have AT&T as your long distance, they automatically block all prison collect calls. They instructed me to call EverCom, a phone company which would allow collect calls to be made without a block and you can still keep AT&T as your long distance carrier. Every Federal prison does not work with them, so you should check first. I think you have to prepay before any calls are able to come thru. Their number is
(800) 844-6591. I dont use them because I just send Tim some money every week (about $30 or $35) to use for calling me direct, etc... Good Luck!!

Pookie :wave:

My husband calls me direct--no collect calls. He uses the money I send for both phone and commissary. He calls me on my cell phone--there is no problem with that. When he had to call collect one time--the cell phone doesn't work.

With respect to the 300 minutes--he said that he heard that prior to the limit there was a lot of problems with people trying to use the phones. With unlimited minutes--getting phone time was an issue at times. A perspective. However--I think 300 minutes is a challenge. I would prefer 450-500 minutes. As they monitor the calls--there is much we don't say, but 15 minutes a day would be good just to hear his voice and find out what he ate and basic stuff.

Molly

I greatly appreciate your responses Molly & Pookie, thanx.

My situation is that I'm awaiting sentencing, and have a wife and daughter who are gonna wait for me in Lima Peru.

I don't know what the judge is gonna hand me (hopeful on the light side) and got 4 months to figure out the best way for me to call them in Peru.

If anyone out there knows... Does any kind of international call routing work with the BOP?

You can try calling telenet or e-mailing them. Their information is on the top of the opening page of PTO. The guy to talk to there is Robert Owen. He's very knowledgeable about all the institutional phone systems and may be able to set you up with them and it will save your family major $. Good luck!

Deb

Harncw, the Federal phone rates are changing and I do not know the exact rates but I think Molly is pretty close. About .07 for a local call and about .20 for a long distance call. These rates are only available through your commissory account. Your calls are limited to 300 min per month. Originally they were suppose to allow 120 min of collect on top of this, in case of emergency, but that didn't happen.

International calls are a differant matter. As I understand, it depands on the capability of the phone system in the prison. Some facilities allow it, some don't. If they do allow it they will be very expensive, at least a $1.00 per minute. If they can not do it and you want to talk regularly overseas, call me we can send call overseas.

Thanks,
Richard
888-925-1400