AS9304 HUTCHISON-AS-AP HGC Global Communications Limited

AS9304 (HUTCHISON-AS-AP) is held by HGC Global Communications Limited, the Hong Kong fixed-line carrier that grew out of Hutchison Global Communications. It is the operator's main routing identity and one of the largest networks in the AS9000–9500 range: RIS sees 1,178 IPv4 prefixes carrying 1,777,408 addresses, 49 IPv6 prefixes, and 691 observed BGP neighbours.

What it's used for

The evidence shows a network that is doing two jobs at once. The address side is an eyeball network: HGC originates several /14s and /15s (218.188.0.0/14, 221.124.0.0/14, 118.140.0.0/14, 223.16.0.0/14, 113.252.0.0/14) — contiguous, densely covered consumer-scale space, and the sampled reverse DNS confirms it, with PTRs under on-nets.com following a mechanical 5-0-16-223-on-nets.com pattern typical of bulk-assigned broadband and fixed-line customer addresses.

The neighbour count is what separates this from a purely residential ISP. Nearly seven hundred observed peers is a carrier's peering table, not an access network's, and the presence of scattered non-Hong-Kong prefixes among the announcements (including RIPE-region 2a12:ba00::/29 and ARIN-region 2602: IPv6 blocks) points at international transit and enterprise/wholesale customers riding the same ASN. HGC therefore sits in both roles: a Hong Kong retail and business access provider, and a regional carrier selling connectivity onward.

Notable

• Both consumer access and carrier peering share one ASN here, which is why the address count and neighbour count are both high.
• Nearly two million IPv4 addresses makes this one of the largest legacy Hong Kong allocations still in active use.