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Topline:
A planned internet outage will affect Long Beach’s internet and city-provided Wi-Fi starting Friday night through Saturday morning.
What will be disrupted? You won’t be able to access the city’s website, as well as online customer service and payment portals. City-provided Wi-Fi will also go dark.
What will not be affected? Emergency operations will remain online. Residents are advised to continue dialing 911 for emergencies or (562) 435-6711 for non-emergency city services. If you have a water, sewer or natural gas emergency, call the emergency dispatch at (562) 570-2390.
Why now? The city of Long Beach is wiring its internet service to new routers to improve network reliability. Last month, Long Beach and surrounding areas experienced a widespread internet outage after Spectrum cables were cut. Officials say the new routers will allow the city to pivot to an alternative provider in case of an unexpected outage.
Advice from officials: “To prepare for it, I would say whatever services they need to look up do it in advance or after, just plan to do it outside of that outage window,” Rob Centeno, Long Beach’s deputy director for technology and innovation, said. “Outside of contacting the city’s website and seeking online services via the city website, there would be no other impact to the residents.”