Death Row Inmate - Death Row Inmate is a grassroots death penalty educational organization

How to take telephone calls from San Quentin prison inexpensively

Written by Joe Rinehart Sunday, 25 July 2010 11:12

Upon receiving an AT&T telephone bill of over $450 for receiving telephone calls in a single month from death row inmate Michael Flinner, I decided to research potential options to cut the communications bill. Hopefully, this research will help others that have found themselves with the same problem with less expensive options.

The two options this article will pursue include Google Voice and Skype.

I already have a Skype account and quickly learned the cost of adding a dedicated telephone number from San Francisco, CA is $60. annually. The problem I have with skype is that software doesn't exist for my Blackberry and I'd like to be able to accept calls from San Quentin when I'm on the road or otherwise out of the office. For this reason, I decided to try Google voice which is free to have the first telephone number issued.

The process is fairly easy to get setup. Go to Google Voice at URL: https://www.google.com/voice/ and follow the prompts.

The Area code you'll need to accept local calls form San Quention, CA is 415 so type that in the box, wait for the available numbers then select one and click next, then you'll see a screen with this text:

You've successfully set up Google Voice!

As a reminder, your Google number is:

• give out one number that will ring all your phones
• get transcribed voicemails sent to your inbox
• send free text messages & make cheap international calls

To learn more about what Google Voice can do, watch our videos

and upon clicking the finished button, you'll be inside you new Google voice screen.

I am currently wating to verify the testing this telephone number with Michael Flinner to see if indeed he can call it and I receive it without any issues. This article will be completed upon verification of our test.

Best 'net regards,

Joe Rinehart, Internet Director

DeathRowInmate.org