Why Legacy Infrastructure Still Dominates U.S. Operator Budgets

The Tension No One Escapes
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In 2025, nearly half of operational expenditure (OpEx) at U.S. broadband and video service providers is still tied to legacy infrastructure—QAM platforms, coaxial networks, analog gear, and aging STBs. And despite this, most operators are delaying system retirement.

Why? Not because they want to. Because they can’t afford not to.

Operators today are managing dual imperatives:

• Preserve service continuity for a still-active legacy subscriber base
• Advance toward IP, software-defined, and DOCSIS 4.0 platforms under pressure from competition, cost, and evolving viewer behavior

This isn’t a linear path. It's a hybrid one. And that’s precisely the problem.

Legacy platforms remain deeply embedded in billing systems, back-office logic, entitlement flows, and compliance reporting. Ripping them out isn’t just expensive—it’s operationally risky. The consequences of failure are immediate: churn, outages, or regulatory violations.

What the Data Shows

A recent set of operator surveys and analyst reports paints a consistent picture:

• 75% of U.S. operators have postponed infrastructure retirement due to cost, integration complexity, or regulatory dependencies
• Truck rolls, manual maintenance, and spare-part harvesting remain common practice
• Outages tied to hybrid platform misalignment—especially during firmware pushes—are growing

Operators aren’t resisting change. They’re absorbing the cost of delay while trying to figure out how to modernize without triggering disruption.

Compliance Doesn’t Wait

Even as networks evolve, mandates remain in place. EAS signaling must function across both QAM and IP environments. CVAA requires parity for closed captioning and descriptive audio. Data privacy regulations (CCPA, Maine, etc.) don’t make exceptions for legacy systems.

This is where things get especially complex. Ensuring compliance across architecturally incompatible systems isn’t just an engineering puzzle—it’s a resource drain.

And in most cases, automation has not caught up to hybrid realities.

And Then There’s the Workforce

The broadband workforce is aging fast. RF and analog specialists are retiring. Younger engineers coming in are fluent in IP and cloud-native tools—but lack experience with legacy provisioning, channel maps, or SCTE standards.

Operators are caught in a talent bottleneck: unable to fully transition, but lacking enough cross-domain engineers to sustain both sides of the stack.

A Practical Resource for Operator Teams

If your team is working through these same tensions—between what needs to change and what can’t yet be touched—there’s a resource that might help.

Our engineering team compiled field-tested insights, research-backed trends, and transition strategies into a single whitepaper focused on real-world operator challenges: 📘 A Blueprint for Critical Service Transitions

It covers:

• OpEx pressures from legacy systems
• Migration realities for Android TV, RDK, DOCSIS 4.0
• Hybrid compliance risks (EAS, CVAA, privacy)
• Uptime and telemetry across dual-stack architectures
• AI-based approaches for reducing truck rolls and preventing failure
• Workforce knowledge gaps and sustainability

If any of these topics resonate, you can download the latest Blueprint for Critical Transitions whitepaper for a more in depth analysis.

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