Incarcerated People's Communication Services; Implementation of the Martha Wright-Reed Act; Rates for Interstate Inmate Calling Services

<RULE> FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 64</CFR> <DEPDOC>[WC Docket Nos. 12-375, 23-62; FCC 25-75; FR ID 319372]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Incarcerated People's Communication Services; Implementation of the Martha Wright-Reed Act; Rates for Interstate Inmate Calling Services</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) modifies the Commission's previous incarcerated people's communications services (IPCS) rate caps in response to record evidence of the significant unintended consequences of those rate caps. It establishes new interim audio and video IPCS rate caps by basing the calculation of the Commission's rate caps only on billed minutes, incorporating all safety and security measure expenses that IPCS providers reported incurring, and creating an additional rate cap tier for extremely small jails. It also creates a separate interim rate additive to ensure recovery of correctional facilities' costs of administering IPCS. Additionally, it sets a new compliance date for providers' compliance with the new rules and clarifies that the rate cap, site commission, and per-minute pricing rules from the Commission's 2021 Order will no longer apply following that date. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective date:</E> This rule is effective December 5, 2025. <E T="03">Compliance date:</E> compliance with this rule will be required on April 6, 2026. </DATES> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Shabbir Hamid, Pricing Policy Division of the Wireline Competition Bureau, at (202) 418-2328 or via email at <E T="03">shabbir.hamid@fcc.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Report and Order and Order on Reconsideration, document FCC 25-75, adopted on October 28, 2025 and released on November 6, 2025, in WC Docket Nos. 12-375 and 23-62. This summary is based on the public redacted version of the document, the full text of this document can be obtained from the Commission's Electronic Document Management System (EDOCS) website at <E T="03">www.fcc.gov/edocs</E> or via the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) website at <E T="03">www.fcc.gov/ecfs,</E> or is available at the following internet address: <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-25-75A1.pdf.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Synopsis</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> 1. The rates and other practices of the incarcerated people's communications services (IPCS) industry have been the subject of the Commission's and Congress' attempts to ensure just and reasonable rates for consumers and fair compensation for providers for over a decade. Indeed, the Commission has attempted on multiple occasions over the last 12 years to address these issues, spawning multiple rounds of litigation in several federal courts. With the passage of the Martha Wright-Reed Act and its implementation by the Commission in the <E T="03">2024 IPCS Order,</E> the regulatory framework to achieve these dual goals was largely established. But in taking those steps, the new regulatory framework has led to significant unintended consequences that have been brought to light by stakeholders, as well as other challenges that are currently before the First Circuit. The ongoing implementation challenges and the resulting risks to safety and security they cause greatly exceed what the Commission considered or anticipated when it adopted the <E T="03">2024 IPCS Order,</E> leading the Commission to today's action. 2. The goal of today's action is to establish a regulatory framework that is faithful to the Martha Wright-Reed Act and is also consistent with the record that has developed over the last two years. The changes we make in the IPCS regulatory framework today, in particular changes to the methodology for calculating IPCS rate caps, supersede the corresponding aspects of the <E T="03">2024 IPCS Order</E> and result in revised, interim audio and video IPCS rate caps that respond to these unintended consequences. We modify certain aspects of the rate cap calculations and rate structure to more accurately reflect the costs providers and correctional authorities incur in the provision of IPCS. The revised audio and video rate caps we establish are interim, while we seek additional comment in the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (Further Notice) on, among other issues, rate structure and rate cap setting methodologies, the continued evolution of the IPCS market, and potential unintended consequences of these proposals. The goal of our actions today is to create a durable, predictable, and lawful framework that will properly balance our implementation of the dual statutory mandates—just and reasonable rates for consumers and providers and fair compensation for providers—and thereby ensure the continued availability of IPCS to incarcerated people and preserve correctional officials' ability to provide safe and secure access to IPCS. The steps we take today will provide a more stable framework to ensure continued higher levels of communication between incarcerated people and their loved ones, bringing all the benefits that has been demonstrated to provide, including improved reentry into society, reduced recidivism, increased public safety, and strengthened family ties between parents and children, between spouses, and with family members generally. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background</HD> 3. The Martha Wright-Reed Act was enacted by Congress in January 2023 to ensure that “all [IPCS] rates and charges are just and reasonable” while continuing to ensure that “all payphone service providers are fairly compensated.” The Act expanded the Commission's jurisdiction to regulate IPCS to include intrastate IPCS and advanced communications services, including video IPCS. It also permitted the Commission to use industry-wide average costs to determine just and reasonable rates and directed the Commission to “consider costs associated with any safety and security measures necessary to provide” IPCS in determining those rates. In July 2024, the Commission adopted the <E T="03">2024 IPCS Order,</E> implementing the Martha Wright-Reed Act and establishing a new framework for the regulation of the IPCS industry. The Commission also adopted the <E T="03">2024 IPCS Notice,</E> seeking further comment on certain issues, including further disaggregation of the very small jail rate cap tier and the adoption of a uniform rate additive to account for costs incurred by correctional facilities providing IPCS. 4. In October 2024, petitions were filed seeking reconsideration of various aspects of the <E T="03">2024 IPCS Order,</E> including for our purposes here, a petition by NCIC (NCIC Reconsideration Petition). The NCIC Reconsideration Petition seeks reconsideration of two issues the Commission addresses herein. First, it challenges the Commission's decision to exclude certain safety and security costs from the lower bounds of its zones of reasonableness, asserting that the exclusion led to rate caps that are “below the cost of providing service for most IPCS providers.” It also seeks reconsideration of the Commission's decision to include unbilled minutes of use in its cap calculations, claiming that “led to unsustainable rate cap reductions.” 5. During the transition period to the newly adopted rate caps, the Commission was made aware of certain unintended consequences of the new IPCS rules for the industry and for correctional facilities. In the <E T="03">2025 IPCS Waiver Order,</E> the Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB or the Bureau) found the record, developed subsequent to the adoption of the <E T="03">2024 IPCS Order,</E> contained evidence indicating that the restructuring of the IPCS industry required to implement the Commission's new rate cap rules “imposes implementation challenges and safety and security risks greatly exceeding those the Commission envisioned in the <E T="03">2024 IPCS Order.”</E> In light of these difficulties, the Bureau adopted the <E T="03">2025 IPCS Waiver Order,</E> which extended compliance deadlines for the IPCS rate caps and other rules “until April 1, 2027 or any alternative date the Commission sets as part of further action in this proceeding.” On July 30, 2025, the Public Interest Parties filed an Application for Review of the <E T="03">2025 IPCS Waiver Order,</E> asking the Commission to rescind the order and allow the relevant IPCS rules to go into effect as adopted. The Bureau sought and received comment on the Application for Review. <HD SOURCE="HD1">III. Report and Order and Order on Reconsideration</HD> 6. We adopt a joint Report and Order and Order on Reconsideration (Order) to address rate cap setting issues that arose in two distinct procedural settings in this rulemaking—some in response to the <E T="03">2024 IPCS Notice</E> and others in response to the NCIC Reconsideration Petition. We combine the discussions of our Report and Order and Order on Reconsideration into a single holistic discussion to simplify and clarify our analysis of the various rate cap setting modifications we make, which are interrelated and interdependent, but which must be factored together to result in a single set of revised rate caps. For clarity's sake, we identify throughout this hybrid discussion the procedural source of each issue we address and therefore the aspect of the joint Order we issue today. 7. In this Order, we use a two-step process for revising the IPCS rate caps. We first address four methodological issues raised in the record and revise the approach to each in response to comments raised in the record. We then ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 166k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━