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Why not $0?

The marginal cost of the bandwidth required to make the phone calls is negligible, so there is no reason it should cost anything to the inmates.

A simple solution to achieve such a result is to buy a cell phone plan with unlimited minutes and route calls through it.

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> Prisons like the Maryland facility featured in the hit podcast “Serial” sign exclusive contracts with companies like Global Tel-Link, and receive a cut of the proceeds from each call, creating an incentive to raise rates as much as possible.

Cause the prison makes $$$.

Also because, they say, there are costs to the prison in having phones including monitoring to make sure prisoners aren't breaking any laws.

I think these costs should be a cost of doing business as a prison, whereas they consider it should be "user pays".

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