The Economics of the Phone Call

A fifteen-minute phone call from a Washington State Department of Corrections facility to an out-of-state landline costs the inmate’s family approximately $1.40 at 2026 rates.

$1.40 is what fifteen minutes of saying “I love you” costs.

This is, in the aggregate, what makes phone-call economics interesting: there is a market. There has always been a market. The market has prices, and the prices have, until very recently, been set by a small number of telecommunications vendors who held monopolistic contracts with state correctional systems.

The deal

The deal works like this. The state contracts with a vendor — there are three or four major ones nationally — to provide phone services to incarcerated populations. The vendor wins the contract by offering the state a “commission” — a per-minute kickback paid to the state for the privilege of charging incarcerated people’s families to make phone calls. The vendor sets the rate. The vendor pays the state. The state pays the vendor’s invoice from the calling fund.

The math is the math.

The vendor wins the contract by offering the state a ‘commission’ — a kickback paid for the privilege of charging incarcerated people’s families to make phone calls.

In 2018, Washington State eliminated commissions on prison phone calls. The rate immediately dropped from approximately $0.16 per minute to approximately $0.11 per minute. In 2024, the FCC’s interstate cap further reduced the rate to approximately $0.06 per minute for prepaid calls.

What the family pays now

A family taking three fifteen-minute calls per week now pays approximately $0.27 per week, or approximately $14 per year — plus account maintenance fees, deposit fees, and minimum-balance requirements that can quietly push the real annual cost closer to $80–$120.

$14 is the price of a paperback book. $120 is the price of a flight from Seattle to LA. The family pays whichever they pay. The phone call rings.