Securus Announces 99.6% of all Prison and Jail Customers Have Been Converted To Our Voice Over Internet Protocol State of the Art Secure Calling Platform (SCP)

DALLAS, June 16, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Securus Technologies, a leading provider of civil and criminal justice technology solutions for public safety, investigation, corrections and monitoring, announced today that 99.6% of all prison and jail customers have been converted to its voice over internet protocol (VoIP) 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 will cost us over $600 million over just the last seven (7) years through end of year 2015 to construct and to convert our prison and jail base of customers," said Richard A. ("Rick") Smith, Chief Executive Officer of Securus Technologies.

"The reinvestment in our business shows our long term commitment to inmates, friends and family members, and our facility customers – we can deliver more products and services to them at the lowest cost and at the highest commission level – while doing that in a safe and secure way," said Smith.

"We will move from 99.6% on SCP to 100% of our customers on the SCP with the conversion of the Alaska Department of Corrections (DOC) project that we expect to complete later this year.  Customers who have been on older premise-based technology that some of our competitors still use have welcomed the change – they have seen these advantages in the SCP VoIP Platform:

1. Full software upgrade approximately once per quarter that provides additional products, enhancements, and services;
2. Shorter mean time to repair on troubles because most problems can be resolved remotely (through software changes) instead of dispatching a field technician;
3. 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;
4. The ability to provide higher commissions to facilities because the technology is more efficient;
5. Anywhere/anytime web-based facility customer access to key information and analysis through the S-Gate portal;
6. 7 x 24 x 365 Real-time monitoring of all facilities by our Network Operations Center with trained/certified technicians that can find, diagnose, and fix most problems before our facility customer even knows that there is a problem."

"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," said Smith.  "My recommended key questions that any facility needs to ask their inmate telephone provider to be sure they are up to date on technology are:

1. Do you own your own platform?  If not – be careful because you are dealing with a middleman that does not own the full technology required;
2. Do you have all of your facility customers on the same inmate calling platform?  If not – be careful because your provider has not re-invested in the business.  It takes a large investment to move from multiple older platforms to a single platform;
3. Do you use a state of the art Voice over Internet Protocol platform for inmate calling?  If not – be careful because you may be left with a flip phone versus a smart phone."

"We studied our older premise-based (where processing/control equipment is located at the prison or jail) system economic characteristics versus SCP and we found the following:

So our SCP is clearly more efficient and effective than older premise-based systems – and our own data proves that conclusively.  We formally submitted a cost study to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in July, 2014 that includes the economic characteristics of the Secure Calling Platform – we did that as part of the Inmate Calling Rate Docket."

"Those prisons and jails that have chosen Securus over the last five (5) years have told us that they picked us for the technical capabilities that we offer, for the economics that we provide to inmates, friends and family, and corrections officers, for our customer service, and most important – for our people that they work with at Securus," said Smith.

"The above represents my views on what I think is important for sound inmate telecom decisions – but the cold and hard statistics back me up, i.e., we win $2.70 of new business for every $1.00 that we lose to our major competitor – that is our record over the last five (5) years.  So the ultimate decisions that corrections officials make back up my observations and the metrics presented," said Smith.

ABOUT SECURUS TECHNOLOGIES

Headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and serving more than 2,600 public safety, law enforcement and corrections agencies and over 1,000,000 inmates across North America, Securus Technologies is committed to serve and connect by providing emergency response, incident management, public information, investigation, biometric analysis, communication, information management, inmate self-service, and monitoring products and services in order to make our world a safer place to live.  Securus Technologies focuses on connecting what matters^®.  To learn more about our full suite of civil and criminal justice technology solutions, please visit SecurusTechnologies.com.

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SOURCE Securus Technologies, Inc.

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