I ordered this phone service. Is my inmate having to pay out of his calling card along with what I paid to the online inmate phone service?

Yes, your inmate (or you) have to pay for the local call. One single telephone carrier has the contract for all outbound calling - you have to use them for any call to connect. There are two distinct prices for local and long distance calling out of a detention facility. We get you a number that best takes advantage of their pricing. Our fee is absorbed by the savings per call. Try and look at this scenario like the old phone booths. You go into the phone booth to make a local call, put a quarter into the slot and you can make a local call for two hours if you choose. Use the same phone booth for a long distance call - every three minutes an operator would break in and have you insert several more quarters to keep the connection alive. The longer you talk, the more quarters it takes. The prison phone system is exactly like this. They have a monopoly and you have to pay them for the connection. The choice is to pay them for a local call (with the quarter) or the long distance call (with the roll of quarters). Your inmate is going into the phone booth with our local number and with one quarter, is bypassing the need to use the roll of quarters. You are paying for the local call but we are still connecting you "long distance" - which is the greater part of their cost to you. What we are selling you is a local number and the long distance minutes.