Need affordable internet? Long Beach has a hotline for that

During the pandemic, Long Beach opened a hotline to connect residents to low-cost internet plans and digital skills training.

Four years and almost 3,000 calls later, the city continues to see a demand for affordable broadband — especially now that a federal internet discount for low-income people expired in May.

It’s hard to say exactly how many people have had to shut off their Wi-Fi since the end of the Affordable Connectivity Program, a $14 billion investment from the Biden Administration to get more people online. But now that the $30 discount is gone, one thing is for sure: Many families are seeing higher internet bills.

“Some of them have had to make the difficult choice of canceling their service altogether,” said Raul Vazquez, a digital equity and inclusion coordinator at the city of Long Beach.

“Residents on our hotline ask ‘What’s out there now? What can you offer?” he said.

Those questions are answered by a team of “digital inclusion navigators,” who can direct Long Beach residents to free and low-cost internet services, computers and more. A city hotline like this is rare in Southern California.

What’s available

The navigators share information about a number of different options, many of which are also available to residents outside of Long Beach:

• Low-cost plans of commercial internet providers, like AT&T, Frontier and Spectrum.

• Human-I-T, a nonprofit which offers eligible residents a mobile hotspot for as low as $15 a month. (The plan is available to income-qualified people not just in Long Beach but across SoCal too. Click here to apply.)

• Lifeline, a federal subsidy program that provides a $9.25 monthly discount off the cost of phone, internet or bundled services. To qualify, a household income must be 135% or less than the Federal Poverty Guidelines, or $40,500 for a family of four. California has its own version called LifeLine (with a capital “L”.) You can use the state’s website to apply for both discounts at once.

• The nonprofit EveryoneOn and the California Emerging Technology Fund has a tool which allows you to plug in your ZIP code for a list of comprehensive programs in your area, including low-cost internet service, computer offers and digital skills training. 

• This tool from the group BroadbandNow allows you to compare internet plans and prices.

Resource guide

The city of Long Beach also regularly updates its 22-page digital inclusion resource guide which shows you how to find free public Wi-Fi and other library resources, as well as free digital skills training, job resources and e-waste removal. The guide is available in four languages: English and Spanish, Tagalog and Khmer.

About 3 million California households — and more than 23 million nationwide — were enrolled in the ACP by the time the federal government stopped accepting new applications in February. The program gave eligible residents $30 off their monthly internet bill, and $75 off for those on tribal lands. It ran out of money this summer after months of Congressional deadlock.

Losing coverage

In 2020, an estimated 416,000 L.A. County households lacked internet service. Now, county officials say that number is down to 320,000 households. But the loss of the ACP could threaten that progress.

“We're likely going to see a backsliding in those adoption numbers as families simply can't afford to continue their internet service,” said Eric Sazaki, digital equity officer for the county’s Internal Services Department. Its Delete the Divide initiative is aimed at closing the gap between people who have easy access to the internet and technology, and those who don't.

In Long Beach, an estimated 5% of households lacked a broadband subscription in 2022, down from 8% in 2019.

“One of the reasons we were able to make [that] progress was the Affordable Connectivity Program… so I'm concerned that some of that internet access will be lost,” said Lea Eriksen, the director of technology and innovation and chief information officer for the city of Long Beach.

Hurting the economy

A recent study found that half of the households enrolled in the ACP said they would either terminate service or downgrade to a slower or cheaper option upon the program’s end. That could hurt the economy and hurt low-income communities, according to the Benton Institute on Broadband and Society.

About 13% of ACP households said that losing the $30 per month service subsidy would cause them to cancel service and 36% said that, without ACP, they would seek a cheaper plan.

The end of the program could result in $2 billion in annual losses for the U.S. economy since people who aren't online can't shop or make it to telehealth appointments.