Regional connectivity through the morning after a disaster

I am managing executive officer and chief operating officer of Hanagiri Networks, a cable television, fibre broadband and community broadcasting operator listed on the Standard Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. We serve 441,000 households across Kumamoto, Kagoshima and Miyazaki prefectures, run seven local community channels and resell mobile service to 98,000 lines. I am responsible for network and field operations, our two contact centres, community channel operations and the purchase of field work from 46 contractor firms: 1,480 employees, about 1,350 contractor technicians and ¥31 billion of annual operating cost. I report to our president, Masayuki Ikegaya, and have sat on our board as an inside director since June 2023.

I began in 1994 as an outside-plant engineer with Hiotsu Densetsu, a Fukuoka cable contractor, and spent nine years on poles and in site sheds before I managed more than a crew. I then ran network operations at Amane Cable Television in Kumamoto, one of the stations later merged into Hanagiri, and led access-network field operations in eastern Japan for Rensei Telecom, including the restoration after the March 2011 tsunami. I came home in 2014, two years before the April 2016 earthquakes tested everything I believed about restoration.

Three questions have shaped my work since. In what order should a network come back when it cannot all come back at once, and who should settle that order? How do we replace an ageing coaxial network without abandoning the older customers who depend on it most? And who will climb the poles in ten years, when the average technician in our contractor firms is already past fifty? None of my answers was cheap, and some cost revenue our sales colleagues had counted on.

Current focus

I am preparing the last phase of our coaxial retirement: 116,000 homes, many in hill and island areas where a fibre drop can cost three times the urban figure and permits will set the pace more than our crews. I am also reworking our typhoon-season surge plans with contractors around the overtime limits that now apply to construction work.

Conversations I welcome

I intend to stay at Hanagiri until the coaxial retirement ends in 2029 and am not seeking another executive role. With our president's consent and our board's review, I would consider one outside director seat at a listed company outside telecommunications and broadcasting whose service depends on field crews and disaster restoration. I take a few speaking invitations and peer conversations a year, mainly on resilience and field workforces.