With news of the recent “Shawshank Redemption”-like prison break in upstate New York, attention has been focused on our nation’s penal system and what goes on behind the bars.
One aspect that most civilians probably don’t give much thought to is phone service, but those operating the prisons watch that bottom line carefully, and are always on the lookout for a way to shave costs.
That might be why Securus Technologies, a provider of civil and criminal justice technology solutions for public safety, investigation, corrections and monitoring, has moved into the VoIP space in a big way. The company recently announced that 99.6 percent of its prison and jail customers have been converted to its Voice over Internet Protocol Secure Calling Platform (SCP).
“We have by far the largest corrections calling VoIP platform in the world with the SCP, more products, the most efficient platform – a work of technology that cost us over $600 million over just the last seven years through end of year 2015, to construct and to convert our prison and jail base of customers,” said Richard A. Smith, CEO of Securus Technologies.
The company expects to hit the magic “100 percent” mark once its current Alaska Department of Corrections project wraps up later this year.
The company makes a good case for VoIP in prisons—and in the general business world as well—by offering:
- A full software upgrade approximately once per quarter;
- Shorter mean time to repair on troubles because most problems can be resolved remotely;
- The ability to provide lower rates to inmates and friends and family members because the technology is more efficient from both operating expense and capital expenditure perspectives;
- The ability to provide higher commissions to facilities because the technology is more efficient;
- Anywhere/anytime web-based facility customer access to key information and analysis;
- 7 x 24 x 365 real-time monitoring of all facilities by Securus’ Network Operations Center.
“Cloud based and Web accessible are the key technology components of our SCP – to produce a highly efficient calling platform with all of the products that our facility customers need,” Smith said. And that applies equally to general business use as well. Isn’t it time your company looked into VoIP?