Revenue returns as jail services for prisoners
By Heidi Rowley
Inmates in California’s prisons and jails are allowed to phone home -- collect and for a price.
In Tulare County, that price starts at nearly $3 for the first minute.
The money collected from the calls is split between the phone company and the prison or jail. The Tulare County Sheriff’s Department averages more than $500,000 a year from inmate phone calls -- an average of $407.42 per inmate, according to an Associated Press analysis. Most of that money is returned to inmates in the form of classes, televisions or sports equipment.
Gary and Debbie Sierra of Porterville said they have had phone bills up to $900 in one month by accepting collect calls from their son, who is in the Tulare County Main Jail. Debbie Sierra said their bills are usually between $600 and $800.
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While IP telephony is still restricted to closed user groups, the market is growing at a fast pace with deployments taking place across the enterprise, says SRIKANTH RP
VOICE quality and infrastructure issues don’t hinder the IP telephony market anymore. After the initial reluctance to adopt IP telephony, companies across sectors are deploying IP telephony devices. Market research firm Frost & Sullivan estimates the Indian IP telephony market to be worth $30.38 million in 2003, with a growth of 199 percent from 2002. The firm expects the market to touch $250.13 million by 2010, growing at a CAGR of 35 percent.
While India is still way behind in terms of IP infrastructure, many organisations are looking at an evolutionary approach by integrating their traditional network with an IP one. Though the market was initially driven by the prospect of cost savings, today a majority of customers are looking at IP telephony for using their excess bandwidth while taking advantage of new features. The growing importance of India as a key VoIP market can also be seen from the reports of analyst firms. IDC Asia Pacific estimates VoIP services in India to be the second-biggest VoIP market in the region behind China.[ read more ]
(Bloomberg) Sprint Corp., the No. 4 U.S.
mobile- phone company, said its customers will get access to 2,300 public wireless Internet connections run by SBC Communications Inc.
The accord boosts by 75 percent the number of wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, sites available in coffee shops and other public places to Sprint customers, said Wes Dittmer, head of Sprint’s Wi-Fi unit. SBC users can browse the Web and view files at five Sprint locales. He declined to disclose financial terms.
U.S. Wi-Fi sales may surge to more than $1.5 billion a year by 2008 from $33 million this year, said Pyramid Research, helping phone carriers compensate for a slump in wire-line services. Second-quarter sales of local calling, the main business at San Antonio-based SBC, dropped 6.5 percent. Sprint’s long-distance sales fell 6.6 percent.
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