County to Bring High Speed Internet Options to Areas Impacted by the Digital Divide

The County of Los Angeles and WeLink Communications have partnered to bring affordable and reliable broadband internet to underserved areas in East Los Angeles/Boyle Heights and South Los Angeles. These areas have been greatly impacted by the digital divide, which was further heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic. WeLink will offer a ground-breaking low-cost internet plan for qualifying households and ultra-high speed broadband internet across 68 square miles, where there are over 275,000 households and small businesses. The services will feature multilingual support, fixed pricing, and consumer-friendly terms. 

The Los Angeles County community broadband networks or CBN initiative was created to help address the hundreds of thousands of households in the county estimated to be without home internet service. The County Board of Supervisors passed a series of motions beginning in 2021 to address this issue. ISD was tasked with finding ways to provide reliable broadband internet to low-income communities where over 20% of households do not subscribe to home internet. Through an extensive competitive process, the County selected WeLink as the partner for these first two CBN areas. 

WeLink will offer a low-cost home internet plan starting at $25 per month to 50,000 qualified households in South Los Angeles and East Los Angeles/Boyle Heights, surpassing the initial goal in 2022 of serving 12,500 households. They will also offer plans starting at $65 per month to households without qualification requirements. Plans have no promotional rates: Monthly rates, excluding any government fees or taxes, are fixed until at least September 2027. 

WeLink offers internet speeds ranging from 500 megabits per second (Mbps) to 2 gigabits per second (Gbps) – up to 20 times faster download speed and up to 100 times faster upload speed than the new Federal Communications Commission broadband benchmark. All plans allow multiple household members to use high-bandwidth applications at the same time, thanks to fast speeds that are the same for both downloads and uploads. Every plan includes unlimited data, a Wi-Fi router, parental controls, and multilingual customer support without credit checks or cash deposits. 

This partnership covers all or portions of these communities in Unincorporated L.A. County or in the City of Los Angeles: 

• Supervisorial District 1: East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, Montecito Heights, and El Sereno;
• Supervisorial District 2: Adams-Normandie, University Park, Historic South-Central, Exposition Park, Vermont Square, South Park, Central-Alameda, Chesterfield Square, Harvard Park, Vermont-Slauson, Florence, Florence-Firestone, Manchester Square, Vermont Knolls, Gramercy Park, Westmont, Vermont Vista, Broadway-Manchester, Green Meadows, Watts, Athens, Willowbrook, and West Rancho Dominguez; and
• Supervisorial District 4: Walnut Park

Construction is expected to begin in Summer 2024, with internet service rolling out beginning in Fall 2024. Major funding is provided by the American Rescue Plan Act. Also, funding for this project has been provided in part through a grant for local agency technical assistance from a program administered by the California Public Utilities Commission.  

Interested households in the two service areas can sign up for updates and be notified by WeLink when service is available at https://WeLink.com/LACounty/ .