AS7668 HTCN Hokuriku Telecommunication Network Co.

HTCN is Hokuriku Telecommunication Network Co., Inc. (HTNet), the telecoms arm of the Hokuriku Electric Power group, headquartered in Kanazawa and serving Ishikawa, Toyama and Fukui prefectures on Japan's Sea of Japan coast.

What it's used for

• Around 29,700 addresses across nine prefixes, plus 2001:308::/32 in IPv6. The company also runs a data centre in Kanazawa.
• Reverse DNS shows subscriber addressing on the company's fibre brands: NNN.191.250.210.hikari.fibernet.jp and NNN.96.213.202.ohmb.hikarinet.jp are sequentially numbered access pools, the classic shape of consumer and small-business broadband.
• Other blocks carry corporate systems, including hosts in rikuden.co.jp — the domain of parent Hokuriku Electric Power — and generic htcn.ne.jp machines.

Notable

• An eyeball network with a business tail. Japan's regional electric utilities all spun up telecom subsidiaries in the 1990s, riding their own power-line fibre; HTNet is Hokuriku's, the same pattern as Enecom in Chugoku ([AS7670](https://asn.ipinfo.app/AS7670)), QTnet in Kyushu ([AS7679](https://asn.ipinfo.app/AS7679)) and HOTnet in Hokkaido ([AS7682](https://asn.ipinfo.app/AS7682)).

Interesting

• The utility-telecom model gave these companies a rights-of-way advantage no greenfield ISP could match: the fibre was already strung on the power poles. It is why several of Japan's regional broadband providers are, underneath, electricity companies.