Hugh O’Kane ELECTRIC COMPANY, INC.

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 telecommunic...

As the Mercury rises during summer, so does the risk of rolling brownouts and blackouts in densely populated cities. Brownouts happen if there is a drop in electrical power or in the overall power supply. While brownouts do not cause complete power loss, they impact equipment performance and can make for a very unpleasant, stifling hot existence. Blackouts, on the other hand, can arrest everyday life and cause shutdowns to transportation, business operations and daily life routines. Being that this is a complete loss of power for an extended period of time, it typically impacts large numbers of people throughout incredibly large areas. Blackouts usually result from major damage to electrical generation facilities and repair times can take days, if not weeks. The areas that are most prone to power outages are high population centers. If they don’t have enough capacity to reliably serve a population, it can lead to brownouts or rolling blackouts. These regions need to serve a lot of p...

Nestled in the heart of Greenwich Village, New York University (NYU) graduates thousands of students every year with Visual and Performing Arts; Social Sciences; Business, and many more degrees. But in the fall of 2012, NYU taught all of Manhattan and its surrounding boroughs a lesson in engineering and why it’s important to plan ahead. Years prior, NYU started upgrading its outdated Co-Generation (co-gen) plant system. It was not only time for its aging oil-fired-based power network—nearing the end of its life—to be replaced, but it needed to be upgraded to ensure more of the campus was covered, sufficient backup was in place and available for emergencies, and had a more robust power source in place that would comply with future standards and requirements. At the time, no one was thinking about hurricanes or other natural disasters that if experienced, could sever power and incapacitate the campus and surrounding neighborhoods. This upgrade also aligned with New York City’s PlaNYC Cli...

Imagine living where there is no broadband connectivity. At first try, many visualize a rural location somewhere in America’s heartland. But this living scenario is playing out in our more densely populated cities like New York. Reliable and affordable high-speed internet e-Connectivity, or electronic connectivity, is fundamental for business operations, learning institutions and in 2022, basically for general, everyday life operations.   But many residents continue to remain without reliable broadband. It's hard to believe that some of America’s most populous urban centers face this issue, but it’s true. Up to 500,000 households, according to Bloomberg , lack reliable connection in New York City. Still unfathomable? The statistics reported by the New York City government are quite arresting: more than one-third (34%) of households in the Bronx lack broadband at home, compared to 30% in Brooklyn, 26% in Queens, 22% in Staten Island, and 21%in Manhattan. Solving the Urban Digital D...

The financial sector is a critical artery for national and global institutions and governments to pump trillions of “mission-critical”transactions on a daily basis that fuel economies within and across borders. But even a small power outage interruption can cause thousands of financial dealings to freeze, resulting in the world’s monetary heartbeat to arrest . The financial sector requires colossal computing power to trade at lightning speed and frequency, to analyze and react to market fluctuations, and to provide customers—both private and government—with seamless access to monetary services and trades. Financial institutions require a highly reliable uninterrupted power supply (UPS) fed through a resilient electrical network that can maintain optimal operations in the event of a blackout, breach or natural disaster that would otherwise cripple its power source. Case in point: the US Federal Reserve in February 2020 experienced a three-hour national outage. To many, that may seem tri...

Pre-COVID, the next generation of broadband connectivity—5G—looked like it would follow suit with the generations before it when it came to its rollout and establishment. But the pandemic changed that. And changed quickly the critical need for advanced broadband connectivity.   Unlike the generations before it and the current Wi-Fi networks deployed, 5G provides faster connection speeds, quicker downloads, lower latency, and the ability to connect more devices in a network or area—critical for business growth to city-based enterprises. In short, 5G holds the potential to stimulate local economies, improve overall urban broadband services and even ease some of the challenges of expanding existing networks. This, however, can only be experienced if legislators pave the way for the 21st century digital highway so its residents and business owners can access it. Remember March 2020? Not only did businesses and enterprises suffer as workers throughout populous urban centers like New Yor...

Industrial wastewater management plants, electricity suppliers, oil refineries, chemical, fertilizer and manufacturing plants all require a tremendous amount of power to maintain operations. While their primary electrical grid is their main source of power, such facilities require backup, or Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) systems to ensure seamless operations. Unlike data centers, enterprise campuses or other commercial facilities, industrial plants face much more rigorous operating conditions. These can include arresting weather conditions to power surges that can cripple and degrade safety protocols in place . Equipment within these plants is often exposed to harsher environments including fluctuating temperatures or air elevated moisture content in the air that can cause interruptions. According to Bloomberg , not only are electrical utilities making $100 billion in investments annually to upgrade their aging grids, but these facilities are also facing pressure to make their inf...