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FCC bureau adopts the forms providers of prison and jail phone and video calls must use to report 2025 costs by December 21

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Original editorial artwork from the Hugin archive; symbolic illustration, not a depiction of the subject.

The FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau and Office of Economics and Analytics adopted the instructions, templates and certification form phone and video providers for people in prisons and jails must use to report their 2025 costs, in an order released September 21, 2026. Providers must file by December 21, 2026 — a compliance date, and one the order makes contingent on OMB finishing its Paperwork Reduction Act review. The bureaus point to the Commission's stated intent to set permanent rates in 2027. This order changes no one's phone bill today.

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A Federal Communications Commission bureau and one of its offices have adopted the instructions, Word and Excel templates, and certification form that providers of phone and video calls to people in prisons and jails must use to report their 2025 costs. The document, issued by the Wireline Competition Bureau (WCB) and the Office of Economics and Analytics (OEA), describes itself as a "Final action," taken under authority the full Commission delegated earlier — not a new decision on what a call may cost. The Order was released September 21, 2026; the Federal Register notice summarizing it is scheduled to be published on Monday, October 5, 2026.

Who must file

Providers of what the FCC calls incarcerated people's communications services (IPCS) — audio and video calls — are the ones covered. The bureaus considered easing the load for small providers under the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act, looking specifically at businesses with fewer than 25 employees, but concluded "any further reduction in the burden of the collection would be inconsistent with the objectives behind the collection." There is no separate, lighter filing track for small providers in this Order.

What they must report

Providers report calendar year 2025 only; the bureaus turned down requests from some commenters for three years of data. Required data includes capital assets, capital expenses and operating expenses sorted into categories and subcategories; tablet minutes of use split between regulated and non-regulated services; fees paid to outside companies for payment processing; total monetary and in-kind payments to correctional facilities; and a newly adopted, measure-by-measure accounting of safety and security spending, in which each provider identifies its own discrete safety and security measures and estimates what share of its costs each one represents. Providers must also submit audited 2025 financial statements and have a company officer certify the "truthfulness, accuracy, and completeness" of what they submit.

The dates

This is a compliance date, not a comment deadline: "Providers must file their submissions by December 21, 2026." The Order sets that date as 90 days after its own release on September 21, 2026, "unless the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has not completed its review of this collection under the Paperwork Reduction Act prior to then."

What it does not say

The Order does not describe a waiver or extension process for this filing deadline beyond that OMB contingency. It separately mentions an "IPCS-specific waiver process," but that applies only to a provider arguing the Commission's rate caps fail to pay it fairly — not to this filing. The Order does not state what happens to a provider that fails to file.

What the Commission says this is for

The bureaus say the collection will let the Commission "assess the status of the industry" and support its stated intent "to establish permanent rates for IPCS in 2027." The Order ties its measure-by-measure safety-and-security reporting to the Martha Wright-Reed Act, whose direction it describes as one to consider costs for "small, medium, or large facilities." This Order itself sets no rate and changes no price paid today.

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