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WASHINGTON, Oct. 28, 2025 – The Federal Communications Commission voted Tuesday to institute higher rate caps for communications services in prisons and jails. The interim caps adopted Tuesday will go into effect 120 days after the order is published in the federal register, and will remain in place until the agency sets permanent ones.
The increased interim rates were adopted on party lines, with Democratic FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez dissenting. The docket had been the subject of fierce lobbying from advocacy groups that oppose the new rates and prison communications providers that argue the previous rates were too low.
“The order the commission is adopting today is indefensible,” Gomez said. “It implements an egregious transfer of wealth from families in incredibly vulnerable situations to greedy monopoly companies that seek to squeeze every penny out of them.”
In a change from the public draft posted earlier this month, agency staff said the adopted text includes an inflation factor that would increase rate caps further depending on facility size.
The FCC said this summer it would delay implementing its 2024 order capping voice and video call rates in correctional facilities until 2027. Amid a legal challenge from prison communications providers and others, the agency told judges last month it was planning a vote on updates to its rate caps.
The rationale for raising rate caps was at the heart of the dispute before the agency. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr argued, as the agency did in its order, that there was good reason to institute higher interim rates.
The 2024 rules “have resulted in serious unintended consequences,” he said. “For example, by limiting how facilities could recover safety and security costs. Some prisons were forced to scale back or even stop offering service altogether.”
For Gomez and the advocates, those were a small number isolated incidents that didn’t require a new system nationally.
“By one measure, today 76 percent of prison systems across the country already comply with the 2024 rate caps, and only three states – Florida, Kentucky, and Oklahoma – have rates above the new rate caps proposed in this order,” Gomez said. “This means that most of the prisons in the country can and do provide IPCS services with the rate caps we previously implemented.”
That data was compiled by Worth Rises, a nonprofit that has opposed the new rules.
Carr and Republican FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty said they were eager for stakeholders to provide more information as the FCC considered where to go on permanent rate caps.
“We had very sufficient, adequate evidence in the record at this point that we grounded this particular decision in,” Carr said at the agency’s press conference after the meeting. “But again, if people have more, or different, contradictory [evidence], please put it in the record. We’ll give it all weight.”
The agency also voted to propose updates to its satellite licensing scheme, take comment on making spectrum above 24 GigaHertz (GHz) easier for satellite companies to use, and update its equipment authorization program, among other things.
Satellite licensing
The agency unanimously voted to approve a notice of proposed rulemaking that would change its licensing process for satellites and earth stations.
“We propose to replace our legacy default-to-no mindset with a default-to-yes framework,” Carr said. “We plan to do away with bespoke licensing processes in favor of a licensing assembly line.”
In addition to standardizing the process, the agency is proposing to extend the license term for most of those stations to 20 years, expand the list of modifications licensees could make without agency approval, and require space station operators to share certain data, among other things.
Upper Microwave Flexible Use Service
Also unanimously adopted, the UMFUS notice seeks comment on ways to make it easier for satellite operators to access certain spectrum bands.
That spectrum, in the 24 GHz, 28 GHz, upper 37 GHz, 39 GHz, 47 GHz, and 50 GHz bands, is allocated for sharing between terrestrial mobile operators and satellite companies.
But since carriers purchased the airwaves at auction, they haven’t been used as intensely as some had expected at the time, the FCC said in the public draft of its order, arguing a cumbersome licensing process has kept satellite players out of the bands as well.
Elon Musk’s satellite company SpaceX has asked for an easier licensing scheme in the airwaves over the summer, something the wireless carriers strongly opposed. The millimeter wave bands can carry lots of data, making them useful for high-traffic areas like sports venues, but don’t travel long distances or punch through obstacles well.
Carr said use by satellite operators wouldn’t upend carriers’ current operations in the band.
“We view these efforts as a win-win, not zero-sum,” he said. “We’re confident the changes we propose in this item will help earth station and 5G terrestrial operators use these frequency bands more intensely while living side by side in their operations.”
Equipment authorization
The agency adopted another item that would tighten its prohibition on new wireless gear from blacklisted Chinese companies like Huawei.
The order, again unanimously adopted, would add modular transmitters, a common component in wireless devices, to the FCC’s list of banned equipment from blacklisted companies. The agency would also not authorize new devices that contained modular transmitters made by covered companies.
The item would also prohibit the import and marketing of previously cleared devices made by companies that have since been banned. It would take comment on banning more components from covered companies, among other things.
The agency, which has to certify new wireless devices being sold in the U.S., has moved recently to remove from that certification program labs that are partially owned by the Chinese government. The FCC has taken comment on going further and blocking all labs located in China, where an estimated 75 percent of all new devices are currently tested.
That work is currently on pause because of the government shutdown.
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