Can CityTeleCoin Force You to Drop Your InmateAid Number?

No. CityTeleCoin cannot tell you what phone services you can or cannot have. They have no authority over your personal phone accounts, and they cannot require you to disconnect a number that has nothing to do with their system.

What InmateAid provides is a local phone number that forwards to your existing phone. That number lives entirely outside of CityTeleCoin's platform. It is your number, on your phone, and it is none of their business.

What is actually happening here is straightforward. Prison phone service providers like CityTeleCoin make significant money on long-distance call rates. When families find ways to reduce those costs through a local number, it cuts into that revenue. Telling customers they need to disconnect outside services is a pressure tactic designed to protect their billing rates, not a legitimate requirement.

To be clear about how the two services interact: your inmate still places calls through CityTeleCoin's system at the facility. InmateAid does not replace that. What changes is that instead of your inmate dialing a long-distance number and you paying long-distance rates, they dial a local number that routes to your phone. CityTeleCoin processes the call the same way they always do. The difference shows up in your per-minute cost.

You are not doing anything wrong, and you are not violating any agreement by having a local forwarding number. Do not let them pressure you into giving it up.