“A federal appeals court has put on hold a Federal Communications Commission order imposing strict caps on prison phone-call rates.
“The FCC in October voted 3-2 to put a rate cap on charges for all phone calls—local, in-state and interstate—to and from prison inmates. The commission said the move was intended to curb what it described as “excessive rates and egregious fees” paid by inmates, saying combined charges and fees in some cases had reached as high as $14 a minute, or an estimated 31 times the per-minute cost of a call to Antarctica.”