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 Divide
There is, however, a viable solution. Establishing “Gig Centers” in such neighborhoods where residents do not have adequate broadband can get them quickly connected and online. A Gig Center essentially is a free Wi-Fi location for the residents of a community. Hugh O’Kane Electric (HOK), led by President Hugh R O’Kane, is making Gig Centers a reality through its partnerships, for many New York communities. Most recently, it played an instrumental role in bringing a broadband network to life in the Bronx and playing a critical role in supporting the establishment of a Gig Center in Harlem.
Just a stone’s throw away from the Bronx Museum of Arts and Yankee Stadium, lies the Andrew Freedman Home, a city landmark that has been reimagined into an artists' hub focusing on the visual and performing arts, with a special emphasis education and training.
Working with its partner ZenFi Networks, a wireless infrastructure provider supporting mobile technologies, HOK installed a new fiber optic cable from an existing ZenFi backbone cable in the manhole system directly into the Andrew Freedman Home extending ZenFi’s fiber optic network. Now the Andrew Freedman Home can better educate and train its community.
In Harlem a Gig Center is transforming this neighborhood, essentially creating a tech hub in New York City. Again, HOK installed a new fiber optic connection from an existing ZenFi backbone telecable to tie the center into the network grid. ZenFi Networks’ network edge colocation solutions accommodate ultra-densification of mature 4G LTE networks and the ultra-low latency needs of next generation networks. Mobile network operators, CDNs, wholesale providers, and internet exchanges can utilize the densely deployed aggregation facilities throughout the New York and New Jersey metro region to aggregate traffic, collocate baseband processing, and provide caching at the network edge.
The Harlem Innovation Space for People, as the 2,800-square-foot center is called, offers coworking desks, after-school programing, events space and public access to 20 computers. It is part of the LinkNYC project—a communications network that is replacing pay phones across the five boroughs with new wireless structures called Links. Each Link provides super fast, free public Wi-Fi, phone calls, device charging, and a tablet for access to city services, maps and directions.
Both the Bronx and Harlem projects are examples of the transformational power Gig Centers can bring to neighborhoods and communities.
So how are wireless and wireline service providers ensuring their network is able to seamlessly have the most reliable infrastructure in place? It comes down to having established, trusted partnerships with companies like Hugh O’Kane Electric’s Telecommunications division. HOK provides leading-edge design, construction, installation and maintenance of state-of-the-art telecom networks for wireline, fiber optic, and wireless networks.
The institutional expertise Hugh O’Kane is able to provide to private and public entities is paramount in order to design and implement projects that can successfully expand their service offerings. This lineage of decades-long experience 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 and telco providers much more easily. The company’s reputation is built upon attention to detail while meeting clients’ time frames and budgets.
For more than 35 years, fiber optic and wireless network carriers have come to trust HOK whose expertise in specializing in telecommunication projects for New York City and its metro area are unsurpassed. The company, through its partnerships with the leading, network, wireless and telcos service providers, has been upgrading, expanding, and installing wireline and wireless networks for a variety of public and private enterprises on a regular basis.
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