South Bay Fiber Network
Addressing the Digital Divide
Many California households still lack sufficient bandwidth to meet their needs. In December 2020, the Little Hoover Commission spotlighted the South Bay Fiber Network as an example of initiatives municipalities have created locally and across the globe to bring fiber broadband networks to communities. Learn more in their Issue Brief: California’s Digital Divide.
The SBCCOG has identified sub-regional underserved areas in need of better digital capacity that could be served through connection to the SBFN. These areas include Inglewood, Hawthorne, Gardena, Carson, and neighborhood areas of San Pedro (located in Council District 15 of the City of Los Angeles). Such communities face challenges across multiple factors that depress socio-economic activity and viability. They are under-resourced technologically and underserved in terms of accessibility to high-speed broadband, with many neighborhoods having insufficient broadband speeds to meet the state and federal broadband goals. Effectively, they are digitally excluded.
The Digital Equity Project
In 2022, funded by the California Public Utilities Commission, The SBCCOG was awarded a Local Agency Technical Assistance (LATA) grant to begin planning to address these issues. The study, called the “Digital Equity Project” began to address these inequities by conducting preconstruction broadband deployment activities. These tasks included conducting needs assessments and conceptual design to achieve 100 megabits per second (Mbps) for better download and upload speeds across these disadvantaged areas of the South Bay. One of the project’s goals was to identify and plan network designs to support small and micro-businesses with sufficient connection and, eventually, to bring fiber to South Bay homes.
The planning process discovered additional anchor organizations, as well as neighborhoods, where there would great value in delivering baseline service or government infrastructure at a lower price than that provided by existing internet providers. The findings and network designs are a resources that may lead to a subsequent request for funding to expand the SBFN to address digital equity and micro-business success, using existing fiber assets whenever possible.