Business
L.A. County to offer discounted home internet to lower-income residents in some neighborhoods
With the federal government poised to slash subsidies for internet service, L.A. County has started work on a wireless broadband network that will deliver high-speed connections for as little as $25 a month.
The county announced this week that it had signed a contract with WeLink of Lehi, Utah, to build the network and offer the service in East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights and South Los Angeles. Qualified households will be offered a $40-per-month discount on WeLink’s rates, meaning they could obtain the basic 500-megabits-per-second service for $25 a month.
The contract brings a new internet provider to neighborhoods now served mainly by Spectrum and AT&T, which also offer discounted service for lower-income residents — though at much lower speeds. But it will take months for WeLink to build its network, which will rely on a series of rooftop antennas connected to the internet through existing fiber-optic lines.
The looming loss of federal subsidies is a much more immediate problem. Unless Congress renews its funding, the Affordable Connectivity Program will be lapsing this month, terminating a $30-per-month benefit that has allowed 23 million lower-income households to obtain broadband service at little or no cost.
L.A. County has more of these subsidy recipients than any other county in the country — 983,000 households, said Eric Sasaki, manager of major programs for the county’s Internal Services Department. The county’s enrollment, he said, is higher than that in 45 states.
The county’s deal with WeLink has similar roots to the Affordable Connectivity Program, which grew out of the emergency broadband subsidy program the federal government launched at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2021, Sasaki said, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors decided to explore ways to bring high-speed internet quickly to lower-income neighborhoods where more than 20% of the homes weren’t connected. Concerned about kids struggling to attend online classes, the county looked at putting wireless internet hubs at libraries, parks and even restaurant chains before deciding to conduct demonstration projects in four regions: East L.A./Boyle Heights, South L.A., the northern part of the San Fernando Valley, and five cities in the southeastern part of the county.
The county has received $50 million in federal funds for the projects, but about $45 million will go to the East L.A. and South L.A. rollouts, Sasaki said.
“We are also looking for additional funding sources to help execute additional projects,” he said.
The demonstration projects “are kind of a proof of what is possible,” Sasaki said. “The idea was that these would be sustainable and long term.”
WeLink’s service area in East L.A. and South L.A. covers more than 275,000 households and small businesses within 68 square miles.
All or part of the following communities are to be served:
East Los Angeles, Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, Montecito Heights, El Sereno, 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, West Rancho Dominguez and Walnut Park.
The company plans four tiers of service, with equal speeds for uploads and downloads: $65 a month for 500 Mbps, $75 for 1 gigabyte per second, $85 for 2 Gbps, and $99 for small-business connections. Installation and a router will be included, WeLink Chief Executive Luke Langford said.
Qualified homes will receive a $40-a-month discount on the residential tiers. The initial plan is to use the same eligibility requirement the federal government uses for the Affordable Connectivity Program: households earning up to 200% of the federal poverty level, which would be $30,120 for a single individual or $62,400 for a family of four. If the federal program is extended, qualified households would be able to receive the WeLink service at no cost.
If the program is not extended, WeLink and the county will come up with an alternative metric, Langford said, adding that his company is comfortable offering the discounts under the current terms.
The contract calls for WeLink to provide discounted service to 50,000 households. Sasaki said the county would be thrilled if that many homes signed up for the $25 monthly service; if there is even more demand, he said, the county will look for ways to support it.
Surveys show that lower-income households are less likely to have a home internet connection not because the service isn’t available, but mainly because it’s not affordable. Other problems include not having a computer or knowing how to use one, as well as a lack of awareness about programs that can help users overcome these hurdles.
Sasaki said the county plans to address those issues with programs to supply free laptops and technical assistance from “digital navigators” in the communities being served.
It wasn’t an explicit goal of the community broadband program to spark more competition among internet providers, but that’s happening with the WeLink deployment. And if Spectrum and AT&T lower their prices in response, Sasaki and Langford said, that’s another way the project will benefit targeted communities.
WeLink uses unlicensed spectrum in the 60-gigahertz band of frequencies, which means it doesn’t need to obtain permits for the airwaves or tear up streets for new fiber-optic lines. It will also design the network in a way that reduces the number of antennas required to carry data.
Those steps should speed construction of the network, Langford said. But WeLink still has to strike deals to mount its antennas on rooftops, lights and street poles, he said, as well as to use the fiber-optic lines that will connect its network to the internet.
Langford said he expects a “relatively modest” number of customers to be offered service by the end of the year, with the bulk of the deployment going live in 2025 and beyond. People interested in the service can sign up for updates at the WeLink website.
The very high frequencies used by WeLink can transmit an enormous amount of data, but unlike the lower frequencies used by radio stations and cellphones, they don’t travel well through walls. Langford said WeLink installers will either use new cables or a building’s existing wiring to connect the rooftop antennas to routers inside customers’ homes and businesses.
Founded in 2018, WeLink has built networks serving parts of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, Langford said.
Lululemon, the yoga pants and athletic clothing company, has hired a former executive from a rival, Nike, as its new chief executive.
Heidi O’Neill, who spent more than 25 years at Nike, will take the reins and join Lululemon’s board of directors on Sept. 8, the company announced on Wednesday.
The leadership change is happening during a tumultuous time for Lululemon, which had grown to $11 billion in revenue by persuading shoppers to ditch their jeans and slacks for stretchy leggings. But lately, sales have declined in North America amid intense competition and shifting fashion trends, with consumers favoring looser styles rather than the form-fitting silhouettes for which Lululemon is best known.
“As I step into the C.E.O. role in September, my job will be to build on that foundation — to accelerate product breakthroughs, deepen the brand’s cultural relevance, and unlock growth in markets around the world,” Ms. O’Neill, 61, said in a statement.
Lululemon, based in Vancouver, British Columbia, has also been entangled in a corporate power struggle over the company’s future. Its billionaire founder, Chip Wilson, has feuded with the board, nominated independent directors and criticized executives.
Lululemon’s previous chief executive, Calvin McDonald, stepped down at the end of January as pressure mounted from Mr. Wilson and some investors. One activist investor, Elliott Investment Management, had pushed its own chief executive candidate, who was not selected.
The interim co-chiefs, Meghan Frank and André Maestrini, will lead the company until Ms. O’Neill’s arrival, when they are expected to return to other senior roles. The pair had outlined a plan to revive sales at Lululemon, promising to invest in stores, save more money and speed up product development.
“We start the year with a real plan, with real strategies,” Mr. Maestrini said in an interview this year. “We make sure decisions are made fast.”
Lululemon said last month that it would add Chip Bergh, the former chief executive of Levi Strauss, to its board to replace David Mussafer, the chairman of the private equity firm Advent International, whom Mr. Wilson had sought to remove.
Ms. O’Neill climbed the organizational chart at Nike for decades, working across divisions including consumer sports, product innovation and brand marketing, and was most recently its president of consumer, product and brand. She left Nike last year amid a shake-up of senior management that led to the elimination of her role.
Analysts said Ms. O’Neill would be expected to find ways to energize Lululemon’s business and reset the company’s culture in order to improve performance.
“O’Neill is her own person who will come with an agenda of change,” said Neil Saunders, the managing director of GlobalData, a data analytics and consulting company. “The task ahead is a significant one, but it can be undertaken from a position of relative stability.”
Eaton wildfire survivors’ anger about Southern California Edison’s burying of electric wires in Altadena boiled over Tuesday with residents calling on government officials to temporarily halt the work.
In a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, more than 120 Altadena residents and the town’s council wrote that they had witnessed “manifest failures” by Edison in recent months as it has been tearing up streets and digging trenches to bury the wires.
The residents cited the unexpected financial cost of the work to homeowners and possible harm to the town’s remaining trees. They also pointed out how the work will leave telecommunication wires above ground on poles.
“The current lack of coordination is compounding the stress of a community still reeling from the Eaton Fire, and risks causing further irreparable harm,” the residents wrote.
The council voted unanimously Tuesday night to send the letter.
Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesman, said Wednesday that the company has been working to address the concerns, including by looking for other sources of funds to help pay for the homeowners’ costs.
“We recognize this community has already faced a number of challenges,” he said.
Johnson said the company will allow homeowners to keep existing overhead lines connecting their homes to the grid if they are worried about the cost.
Edison’s crews, Johnson said, have also been trained to use equipment that avoids roots and preserves the health of trees.
The utility has said that burying the wires as the town rebuilds thousands of homes destroyed in the fire will make the electrical grid safer and more reliable.
But anger has grown as work crews have shown up unexpectedly and residents learned they’re on the hook to pay tens of thousands of dollars to connect their homes to the buried lines.
Residents have also found the crews digging under the town’s oak and pine trees that survived last year’s fire. Arborists say the trenches could destroy the roots of some of the last remaining trees and kill them.
Amy Bodek, the county’s regional planning director, recently warned Edison that a government ordinance protects oak trees and that “utility trenching is not exempt from these requirements.”
Residents have also pointed out that in much of Altadena, the telecom companies, including Spectrum and AT&T, have not agreed to bury their wires in Edison’s trenches. That means the telecom wires will remain on poles above ground, which residents say is visually unappealing.
“While our community supports the long-term benefits of moving utilities underground, the current execution by SCE is placing undue financial and planning burdens on homeowners, causing irreparable harm to our heritage tree canopy, and proceeding without adequate local oversight,” the residents wrote.
They want the project halted until the problems are addressed.
Edison announced last year that it would spend as much as $925 million to underground and rebuild its grid in Altadena and Malibu, where the Palisades fire caused devastation.
The work — which costs an estimated $4 million per mile — will earn the utility millions of dollars in profits as its electric customers pay for it over the next decades.
Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Gov. Gavin Newsom last year that state utility rules would require Altadena and Malibu homeowners to pay to underground the electric wire from their property line to the panel on their house. Pizarro estimated it would cost $8,000 to $10,000 for each home.
But some residents, who need to dig long trenches, say it will cost them much more.
“We are rebuilding and with the insurance shortfall, our finances are stretched already,” Marilyn Chong, an Altadena resident, wrote in a comment attached to the letter. “Incurring the additional burden of financing SCE’s infrastructure is not something we can or should have to do.”
Other fire survivors complained of Edison’s lack of planning and coordination with residents.
“I’ve started rebuilding, and apparently there won’t be underground power lines for me to connect with in time when my house will be done,” wrote Gail Murphy. “So apparently I’m supposed to be using a generator, and for how long!?”
Johnson said the company has set up a phone line for people with concerns or questions. That line — 1-800-250-7339 — is answered Monday through Saturday, he said.
Residents can also go to Edison’s office in Altadena at 2680 Fair Oaks Avenue. The office is open Monday to Friday from 8 to 4:30.
It’s unclear if the Eaton fire would have been less disastrous if Altadena’s neighborhood power lines had been buried.
The blaze ignited under Edison’s towering transmission lines that run through Eaton Canyon. Those lines carry bulk power through the company’s territory. In Altadena, Edison is burying the smaller distribution lines, which carry power to homes.
The government investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released. Pizarro has said that a leading theory is that a century-old transmission line, which had not carried power for 50 years, somehow re-energized to spark the blaze.
The fire killed at least 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and other structures.
Oil prices rose and stocks moved slightly higher on Wednesday as investors tried to make sense of President Trump’s decision to extend the cease-fire with Iran despite doubts about the status of another round of peace talks.
An adviser to Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the influential speaker of the Iranian Parliament, dismissed the cease-fire announcement, saying that it had “no meaning.” He equated the U.S. naval blockade with bombings, with commercial vessels coming under attack near the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial shipping lane that has been at the center of a growing energy crisis.
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