why do we have to use mci for our son to call from the Arkansas prison?

Question

My son is in the Arkansas Prison and MCI says I have to use their phone company. No one else in my family has heard from MCI. If I discontinue their services will I still be able to get calls from my son?
Prior to them saying I had to use them we had never been late on our phone bill which is thru ATT

but no other family members have heard from MCI about changing their phone service

Answer 1

MCI has the contracts for most prisons in hte nation, this simply means they set the pay rate for how much it costs to speak with prisoners. You don't have ot have MCI as your carrier, but the same way you call someone who has AT&T, while you use Southern Bell, is how it works..your son just...basically has MCI as a carrier. And of course you have to pay at least $3.50 to speak to him for one minute because MCI is a group of assholes who want prisoners to be displaced from their families.

Answer 2

When your son calls you at home, he calls collect, right? You are asked if you agree to accept the charges for the call from MCI, right? They do not mean you have to change your phone service from AT&T to MCI, they're asking you to accept the charges for that call itself, which happens to come from MCI because they have the exclusive contract with the prison on all the phones there. You do not need to change or discontinue your current phone company. The collect call charges from your son will appear on the AT&T phone bill you normally receive. They will be extremely more expensive than a regular collect call because they have a monopoly on the prison's phone system, so you won't want to stay talking long to your son unless you folks have plenty of money to spend on phone bills. So just keep the AT&T, and accept the collect call and you can still talk to your son.

Answer 3

Are you in the same state as your son and the other family members? I am in Montana and recieve calls from a California prison.. I have had no issues at all, besides the outrageous cost, but a lot of the girls I know in California have been forced to either switch carriers or set up a prepaid account with MCI. It is possible that MCI's billing agreement with AT&T expired.
You can get a lot of information about the whole phone mess at http://prisontalk.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=-1&f=733

Answer 4

If that is the only carrier thru MCI then yes. I would check with other carriers but I do think that some carriers have contracts with the Prisons.

Answer 5

Thanks to an exclusive contract that gives monopoly control over prison phones to MCI, the price of talking to inmates is 630% higher than the cost of regular collect calls

Answer 6

form of frightening coming from a borderline character like Gadhafi. that's honestly not an outstanding endorsement, yet neither replaced into Chavez or Castro's endorsement, and this guy replaced into voted in as president besides. Now possibly all of us know what he meant with the aid of 'basically changing u . s . a .! that's not the replace i wanted. Bush's third term? MR

Answer 7

the prison is networked by MCI

Answer 8

Yes because all the incoming and outgoing calls are recorded.

That's to insure that the prisoners are not getting outside help, to make an escape.

I.m sorry. You're stuck with it.

Answer 9

doubtful