An Information Highway NYC Hopes will Face Continual Traffic Jams for Years to Come

There is a new highway system materializing throughout New York City and its boroughs. But this highway won’t cause further traffic jams in the Financial District, bottlenecks at the Lincoln Tunnel, or gridlock in Midtown. Concrete and tar are being replaced with bandwidth and for the first truly significant time, people in and around New York City will have faster connectivity speeds, ultra-low latency and greater data capabilities that will dramatically improve the region’s communications capabilities. And it's free.

The Big Apple is welcoming its residents and visitors to its 21st century information highway that is changing wireless communications experiences throughout Gotham. 

Cellular connectivity is nothing new for New York but closing the city’s digital divide and expanding its network offerings in areas where broadband is hard to find, is. LinkNYC, one of the largest public Wi-Fi networks projects being rolled out, will improve wireless technology coverage all over this city. The launch is the latest for the public-private partnership by consortium CityBridge and ZenFi Networks that is providing free public Wi-Fi access via a series of kiosks rising up throughout New York City-particularly in lower Manhattan and the Bronx-as part of the LinkNYC network. Ninety percent of LinkNYC's new Link5G upcoming installations will be in locations in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and above 96th Street in Manhattan.

However, a wireless network cannot succeed without actual wired backbone. Hugh O'Kane Electric Co., Inc., is supporting this venture by connecting the kiosks and links with fiber and building out the network infrastructure form end to end.  The new Linke5G project involves 2,000 links throughout the five boroughs-all of providing free Wi-Fi access and joining the already 1,850 kiosks Hugh O’Kane Electric has already connected. These original kiosks come with a digital ad panel on each side, USB connections to enable people to charge their devices, a Wi-Fi antenna on top to receive a signal and a tablet that provides users free calling and access to city services, maps, and directions. 

These urban communication towers have been restructured to house equipment from multiple wireless carriers on each antenna. Hugh O'Kane Electric is running the underlying fiber optic network backbone below the city streets to service these kiosks, involving the large, main fiber cables that run lateral fiber branches to all of kiosks and the company is also doing the necessary splicing work required.

Recent Link5G installation locations include: Ellwood St and Nagle Ave in Washington Heights; Westchester Avenue and Reverend James Polite Avenue, Webster Ave and 199th St, Beck St and Longwood Ave as well as Southern Blvd and Leggett Ave in the Bronx; and Pearl Street and St. James Place in Lower Manhattan. 

Bridging the digital divide is nothing new. But for New York City and its neighboring boroughs, it is becoming a significant reality. This necessity for strong internet connection and telephony access was amplified during the pandemic when New Yorkers were sequestered to their homes and businesses were shuttered. In fact, many New York City neighborhoods that are now an integral part of the Link5G project, didn’t even have sufficient broadband these past three years. The latest phase of the LinkNYC project is prioritizing the underserved areas throughout the five boroughs.

Accessible broadband and phone service isn’t a luxury, it’s a daily necessity, and these new Link5G kiosks are going to expand and improve mobile coverage throughout the city and give its residents-many who desperately need it-the access required for communication, education, and entertainment.

About Hugh O’Kane Electric

Hugh O’Kane Electric has unparalleled knowledge about New York City’s electric and communications infrastructure and leads the way when it comes to the expansion of 5G and Wi-Fi services in the New York metropolitan area. The company’s specialized skills in fiber optic networks helped support ZenFi Networks in this prominent project to upgrade LinkNYC. 

This lineage and industry expertise has afforded Hugh O’Kane a competitive edge because it has expert knowledge of an area’s infrastructure and is able to work within the required parameters of existing networks much more easily. In doing so, Hugh O’Kane is able to take the time required to provide an upgraded telecommunications infrastructure needed to ensure continuous, robust connectivity set up municipalities and private enterprises for successful growth.

September 11th Anniversary

This year, Sunday, September 11th marks 21 years since the world changed forever. Nearly everyone older than 30 remembers exactly where they were on that day two decades ago. This will be a day of solemn remembrance for all Americans, but especially for those who were here in New York City on that fateful Tuesday morning.

Hugh O’Kane Electric Co., Inc. (HOK), one of the top telecom & electric contracting companies in NYC, was front and center that day and immediately went to work doing what they could to help restore New York, but that was not their only experience in the restoration and rebuilding of the World Trade Center.

Rebuilding Critical Telecom Assets After the 1993 WTC Bombing

Friday, February 26th, 1993 was a rather unremarkable Friday at the World Trade Center until a truck bomb tore through the B-2 garage level just after noon. Until that moment, the thought of international terrorism on American soil was unfathomable to most New Yorkers, but this day would change the national consciousness forever. In addition to the tragic loss of six lives, the destruction from the underground bomb blast was substantial. All incoming power was cut off, as was the emergency lighting system. The antenna atop WTC 1 lost TV broadcast capability, and many of the telecommunications services for Lower Manhattan were severely damaged. This is where Hugh O’Kane Electric entered the picture.

Teleport Communications Group (TCG) was among the first Competitive Local Exchange Carriers (CLECs) in the U.S. During the mid-1980s, TCG began to use fiber optic cable as a medium that would prove far faster than the existing Ma Bell network of copper cable. This network would eventually grow nationwide and in 1998 would be acquired by AT&T for nearly $12 billion. And since 1986 Hugh O’Kane Electric has been one of the main providers of telecom installation and maintenance services in New York City for the Teleport/AT&T network.

Back in February of 1993, Teleport was a new network built on an as-yet-unproven technology. The main “switch center” (where the network ties together) was located on the B-6 level below the WTC complex (the lowest level). When the truck bomb detonated, it tore through the concrete decks both above and below the explosion site. Not only was the power to the Teleport switch cut off, but water from the ruptured water mains was beginning to flood the lower level where the switch was located. Teleport immediately called Hugh O’Kane Electric into action to salvage the switch center and save their fledgling network.

As the HOK technicians went to work, no-one knew what had actually happened, how severe the damage truly was, or how it could be restored. HOK technicians immediately began to assess the situation and strategize a plan of attack. The challenge was twofold: both restoring power to the switch center and determining a way to mitigate the rising levels of water continuing to flood the B-6 level. The HOK/Teleport team was able to organize a field-engineered power solution. Generators and rectifiers were located, transported, and set up on Liberty Street, and temporary power was cabled down to the Teleport switch center. With no way to adequately pump the water up 6 stories to the street, the only option was to get creative. Using core-drilling machines, the HOK technicians drilled enough holes into the concrete deck to alleviate the rising water. The water level crested just inches short of the Teleport switch equipment.

With the water problem solved and power restored to the switch center, HOK went to work installing new fiber optic cable from the Teleport switch out to the telecom manholes on Vesey and Liberty Streets. By Monday morning (three days following the bombing), enough “light” had been connected to the network to assure Teleport’s customer base that they were in business, and while the temporary power equipment would remain in place for months, it served its purpose. The restoration efforts of HOK and Teleport went a long way toward industry acceptance of the CLEC business model.

The decisive actions of HOK on that February night solidified HOK’s position as the preeminent fiber optic contractor in NYC at a time when the CLEC industry was preparing to experience unprecedented growth. And HOK would be at the forefront of this growth, due in no small part to the work performed in February of ’93.

HOK Leads NYC Electrical Infrastructure Reconstruction in 9/11’s Aftermath

Hugh O’Kane Electric’s second encounter with the World Trade Center and an act of unprecedented terrorism happened 21 years ago this September 11th. It was a crystal-clear Tuesday morning that fateful day and the first autumn relief of a heatwave that had plagued New York City for some time. “I remember walking down Broadway to work that morning full of optimism feeling great about how the weather had finally broken,” said current HOK President Hugh R. O’Kane, who happened to be celebrating his one-year anniversary of joining the family business that day. But that feeling of peace and serenity would be shattered for everyone in NYC at 8:46 a.m., when the first plane slammed into the North Tower.

“We had just walked downstairs in our building on Broad Street to get coffee when everyone on the street was saying that a plane had hit one of the Towers. We just assumed that it was a small plane that had lost control and had a terrible accident. A couple of co-workers and I hurried north the couple blocks to the Trade Center to check it out and just as we got to the intersection of Church and Liberty Streets, the second plane flew over our heads and crashed in the South Tower”

– Hugh R. O’Kane, current HOK President

The truth of what really happened was still clouded in speculation when the first tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. with the second falling 29 minutes later. Rather than remain paralyzed by the shock and trauma of what had just happened, the men and women of Hugh O’Kane Electric knew that AT&T, the former Teleport Communications Group and HOK’s largest CLEC customer at the time, was now crippled by the evident loss of their downtown switch. Unlike in 1993, no amount of quick action or improvisation would be able to restore the AT&T network. HOK would have to re-design and re-build the network for AT&T, as well as many other CLEC customers, and they would have to start immediately.

HOK senior executives, telecom foramen, and project managers immediately established “war rooms'' at 80 Broad Street, 1 New York Plaza and 90 White Street, along with AT&T Central Offices to start planning the damage assessment and restorations concepts while still knowing neither the full extent of the destruction nor the attack’s effects upon the world’s future. While the telecom engineers went to work, New York City began to lock down. Many people headed off Manhattan, not knowing when they would return. But HOK needed to figure out how to mobilize their entire fleet of Outside Plant Vehicles, which were located out in Long Island City, as well as gain unobstructed access for hundreds of field technicians to the area around what would now be known as “Ground Zero.”

 Hugh O’Kane (father and HOK President on 9/11/01) and Hugh R. O’Kane (son and current President) made their way through the ankle-deep ash and soot that covered Broadway to reach the NYC mobile command center that had been established on the West Side Highway, with the aim of getting permission from the City for the HOK employees to be granted access to Lower Manhattan for the coming days and weeks. “I remember seeing the FDNY firefighters gathered along Chambers Street and the West Side who all looked shell shocked. If we only knew then what we would understand later, it was amazing they were able to keep themselves as composed as they did,” recalls Hugh R. O’Kane. After being given passes by the City of New York (in fact the first 300 sequential access passes issued for restoration), the HOK field force gathered en masse at their Long Island City garage the next morning, where a fleet of several dozen OSP trucks rolled across the 59th Street Bridge accompanied by an NYPD escorts and headed downtown to White Street, where they set up a forward operating position for the coming weeks of non-stop network restoration.

The technicians of HOK worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in an area of New York that was now part war zone, part crime scene, and part solemn burial ground. All “business as usual” work was put on hold as HOK re-tasked their entire company to the network restoration of AT&T and the other CLEC customers with whom they worked for years. The immediate response of HOK in rebuilding the fiber optic telecommunications networks of Lower Manhattan for customers such as AT&T allowed certain businesses and institutions to return to “normal” sooner than expected. Their efforts in rebuilding the decimated communications systems downtown played a critical role in the ability of the New York Stock Exchange to reopen just eight days after Wall Street was covered by the debris of the fallen towers. For the second time in less than a decade, Hugh O’Kane Electric went straight to work when a national tragedy struck New York City, and through sheer determination, grit, and ingenuity, came through for their customers just as they had every day since 1946.

Six years after the tragic events of September 11th, it was finally time to begin rebuilding “Ground Zero.” The Port Authority and various other real estate developers planned to reconstruct the hallowed 16-acre site into both a collection of modern office towers, a world class transit hub, and a memorial to the nearly 3,000 men and women who lost their lives that day. This time it would be HOK’s electrical infrastructure expertise and reputation rather than their position as the industry-leading fiber optics contractor, that would bring them to Ground Zero,

Throughout 2007 there were numerous electrical requests for proposal (RFPs) being issued by many of the top Construction Managers in New York for what would become Towers 1, 3, and 4 as well as the National September 11th Memorial and Museum (“The Memorial”). The senior executives of Hugh O’Kane Electric considered all these projects but decided to focus their efforts on winning the electrical infrastructure package at the 9/11 Memorial. HOK considered this project to be the best fit for them, as they had spent the past decade building a strong reputation in the NYC construction community as a best-in-class builder of “critical power systems”—including large switchgear, power distribution, and emergency power systems. After months of value engineering and negotiations with Lend Lease (PANYNJ’s Construction Manager), HOK was awarded “NS11MM Package 49 – Electrical Medium Voltage” for nearly $37 million – one of the largest single electrical contracts ever for Hugh O’Kane Electric.

Work on the Memorial infrastructure project began in the fall of 2008. For the next three years over 100 HOK electricians worked to construct two 5kv electrical substations, dozens of 480v panels throughout the site and all the interconnected wiring which would power up the two (2) 1-acre reflecting pools that rest in the footprints of the fallen towers. When the Memorial plaza opened to the public and the pools began to flow on the 10-year anniversary of Sept 11th, it was a great accomplishment for all the tradesmen and companies working on the site.

“We felt a strong sense of pride in being able to play a role in helping rebuild this sacred place where so many men and women had given their lives. I remember visiting the Towers as a child and getting to go to the top and see all of New York, then accompanying my father in ’93 after the first bomb blast and finally witnessing the Towers fall just as my HOK career began. Our ability to help rebuild was especially meaningful to me as a New Yorker.”

-          Hugh R. O’Kane, who led the HOK efforts on the Memorial project

HOK continues to work on the Ground Zero site performing many smaller telecommunications projects for their customers. Since 1946, and through three generations of family leadership, Hugh O’Kane Electric has always stepped forward when crisis gripped New York City and will continue to do so for years to come.

Client Spotlight: Upgrading a Bank’s Headquarters with Redundant and Resilient Power

Financial institutions require a highly reliable uninterrupted power supply. With millions of transactions and trillions of dollars circumventing the globe daily, customers expect their banks to seamlessly, and securely transfer funds and close their transactions every time with no operational interruptions. 

In order for global financial institutions to ensure such service, their electrical power system requires redundancy, regular maintenance, and upgrades. For that a trusted and experienced contractor is required. If not, even minuscule moments of interrupted service can have a cascading impact on consumer and business transactions that could cost millions in fees and penalties.

One such bank recognized that it was time for extensive renovations and upgrades to its New York City-based headquarters. In order to ensure the work would not have an arresting impact on the headquarters’ operations, as it remained open throughout the entire process, it was paramount for the financial institution to partner with the right electrical contractor. 

For more than 75 years, electrical installer Hugh O’Kane Electric (HOK), led by President Hugh R. O’Kane, has become a leading specializer for companies seeking upgrades or expansions for their power sources throughout New York city and its surrounding boroughs. The company is wrapping up a five-year infrastructure upgrade project to the headquarters of a global banking corporation. 

Significant Power Upgrades

The project involved installing five new uninterruptible power supply (UPS) Line Ups, along with the batteries and distribution associated with them. An UPS, also known as a battery backup, provides backup power when the main power source fails or voltage drops to an unacceptable level. A UPS allows for the safe, orderly shutdown of a computer and connected equipment. 

Specifically, this part of the project included installing five new UPS systems, eight new mechanical substations, bus duct linking systems together for redundancy, UPS controls, a new station battery plant, critical distribution boards, a control system for UPS and mechanical equipment, new lighting, and power in equipment rooms. In addition, it included temporary wiring to support building operations while construction was ongoing.

In addition, contractors installed a new catcher UPS system. The project involved removing an existing UPS and battery room, including new distribution boards installed to power the new UPS and battery plant. 

Power cogeneration, or combined heat and power, is not only a smart choice for the environment, but it’s also great for the bottom line. Cogeneration solutions represent a proven and effective way to foster a robust, long-term and resilient energy infrastructure.

For this project, HOK furnished and installed an electric building on the headquarters’ roof to support two new co-gen engines. The co-gens produce 4,160 volts that are fed into the electrical distribution system to power the building. The co-gen project also involved the install of all electric power wiring as well as all control wiring for the system.

Other key upgrades included:

• Furnished and installed 4" for fiber and data raceways throughout the headquarters

• Furnished and installed a new VESDA fire alarm system in the main electrical rooms; tied the VESDA into the class E system; removed the old pre-action system and installed a new one

• Installed power, data and wiring for security bollards in the loading docks

In addition, extensive upgrades were carried out to the building’s lobby and plaza entrance. The work included a new reflecting pool, grass area, pole lighting, bench lighting, tree lighting, outlets. All of this was carried out while removing and relocating street lights and installing temporary power and lighting in the lobby to maintain access and operations as renovations were underway.

This is why projects of such magnitude require having the right contractor. This institutional expertise Hugh O’Kane is able to provide to private entities is paramount in order to design and implement network projects that can successfully expand their service offerings to increase their market share and gain more customers. This lineage and industry expertise has afforded Hugh O’Kane a competitive edge because it has expert knowledge of an area’s infrastructure and is able to work within the required parameters of existing power supply networks much more easily. In doing so, Hugh O’Kane is able to take the time required to provide a robust power infrastructure needed to ensure continuous, robust connectivity.

5G to Provide a Much-Needed Change to New York’s ‘Change at Jamaica’ Station

Attention commuters: you can now stay connected while catching your connection; The Jamaica station is now online with 5G wireless technology.

Soon, those words will become reality for the thousands of daily commuters at one of New York’s busiest stations: the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) Jamaica station. Customers will no longer be without broadband wireless service when they ‘Change at Jamaica’. As thousands begin to ‘return to normal’, the arresting, unproductive transit period between trains commonly associated with the LIRR will soon be a thing of the past for one of its busiest stations.

Providing WiFi connectivity to public spaces not only involves work from the wireless carriers, but also requires transit authorities to have established, trusted partnerships with installation providers. For more than 35 years, fiber optic and wireless network installers like Hugh O’Kane Electric (HOK), led by President Hugh R O’Kane, have become the industry leader specializing in telecommunication projects for New York City and its metro area.

Hugh O’Kane

When the new LIRR DAS/Wi-Fi system becomes operational, it will improve voice and data connectivity for commuters. For commuters, visitors, and residents, this means a more productive and no longer wasted downtime while at the station. Riders will have the ability to seamlessly use their laptops, smartphones, and other mobile devices to connect to the internet.

The LIRR Jamaica station will provide its commuters— estimated at more than 200,000 weekday pre-COVID, making it the second-busiest station in North America that exclusively serves commuter traffic—wireless internet service that keeps passengers productive, entertained and connected while on the platform or in the terminal as they wait to board their next train.  The Jamaica LIRR station is the fourth-busiest rail station in North America with 1,000 trains passing through each day.

According to Bloomberg, even though wireless providers say they need more airwaves to support the booming public demand for everywhere connectivity, carriers must focus on delivering 5G services that are compatible with 4G core networks. As demand for advanced 5G services grows, network service providers must update their networks in order to be ready for the more advanced 5G services that are on the horizon.

The project covers all six passenger platforms, the Sutphin Boulevard sidewalk area, the ticket building lobby and the station’s west mezzanine. Overall, 84 Wi-Fi access points antennas and 133 DAS antennas are installed across all the public commuter areas. The private network established at the Jamaica LIRR station removes barriers to instantly connect commuters and deliver a better passenger experience.

So how are such public works projects gaining momentum and rapidly proliferating across urban centers throughout the United States? It’s about having the right team of providers, hardware suppliers and installers contracted for each project. Hugh O’Kane, through its partnerships with the leading telcos, has been upgrading, expanding, and expanding WiFi networks for a variety of government projects in New York City and its surrounding boroughs.

This institutional expertise Hugh O’Kane is able to provide to transportation hubs is paramount in order to design and implement network projects that can successfully expand service offerings to increase their customer experience. This lineage and industry expertise has afforded Hugh O’Kane a competitive edge because it has expert knowledge of an area’s infrastructure and is able to work within the required parameters of existing networks much more easily. In doing so, Hugh O’Kane is able to take the time required to provide an upgraded telecommunications infrastructure needed to ensure continuous, robust connectivity set up municipalities and private enterprises for successful growth.