"On May 21, 2002, the Dept. of General Services (DGS) was notified by MCI WorldCom that CDC and California Youth Authority inmates telephone calls will be blocked if the calls terminate with Competitive Local Exchange Companies (CLEC) that MCI WorldCom does not have billing agreements with.  In order for a customer to receive phone calls from inmates, they will be required to transition to a Local Exchange Company that has a billing agreement with MCI WorldCom.

Any questions regarding this memo should be addressed to Karen Wong, Chief, Telecommunications Branch, Facilities Management Division at 916/323-2308 and technical questions should be addressed to Terry Brayer, Facility Capt. (RA) at 916/323-2484."

If you've not heard from your inmate lately, we suggest you contact your local phone company to make sure they have a billing arrangement with MCI.

How to unblock your phone for collect calls if you’re affected by this newest development:

(As posted to the VIP-Cali E-groups list)

The phone company at CSP Lancaster is IOS. The parent company is ILD communications; their phone number is 866/827-5453.

I was told I need to set up a billing agreement with them. Tomorrow they will fax me the form I need to fill out. I also have to give them a $50.00 refundable deposit to ensure that I will pay my bill, which is refundable in three months. Now keep in mind this is only for people who have a phone company that does not allow them to do direct billing. Mine (Cox) is one of those. Pacific Bell, however, will do direct billing with this company (IOS/ILD). Once I fill out the form to get billed by them and send my deposit, they will contact the prison and have them remove the block on my number. I asked "The prison has the block?"? She said it's kind of complicated but they have the facility put a block on any numbers that are not able to be billed by them, to ensure they get paid. This sounds odd to me how they know which numbers they get paid for but anyway, then it's done & I can get calls from that facility. They did indeed ask me which facility it was so they can call them and remove the block so they must have some kind of agreement with them.

Now here is the best part. I asked how much will these calls cost and she said it depends on what kind of pay phones they are & how they're set up at the institution. She said they range from as low as $1.75 to as high as $4.00 to accept a call and then the cost per minute ranges from as low as $.10 cents to as high as $.90 cents so that a $18.75 phone call is not unheard of. To hear the charges for the call, she said to press option 3 when the operator comes on to announce a collect call, and then a live operator will come on the line and give the cost to accept and the per-minute charge. I will FOR SURE document the name of the person who gives me the rates when my husband does call and I'll confirm that option everytime until I am sure that's what it is.