First, there were ‘networks’. These were seen as good things. If not quite the quickest route between A and B, they were OK. They did a job: they got there.

Next, there were ‘legacy networks’, also known as ‘the infrastructure that dare not speak its name’ – not to be mentioned in polite technology circles. The legacies in question were purportedly poisoned chalices bequeathed to unsuspecting operators in the PSTN and mobile fields.

Now they have become the ‘heritage networks’. Even while trying to decide whether to file this one under ‘laugh’ or ‘cry’, it’s hard to resist the thought that some bright individual, confronted by a vast and pervasive system of twisted copper, decided that the term ‘heritage’ might help to shunt a lame-duck asset towards the upper half of the balance sheet.

Old money, sunk costs, spare coppers
With the exception of the United States, where the basic telephone network was scarcely within the active purview of the government (not so much ‘Liberty Bell’ as ‘Ma Bell’), most developed countries saw these ‘heritage networks’ grow up under the auspices of the state. In the 1980s and 1990s, telco privatisation saw that this ‘heritage’ was sold wholesale on the equity markets. Reregulation and deregulation have added to the party by throwing them open to competition in the form of parallel networks and network re-use (unbundling).

Two factors serve to either constrain this line of thinking or temper the temptation to take it to extremes.

The first is that the taxpayers responsible for funding investment in the PSTN, now the ‘heritage network’, over a century or so were not adequately compensated with the sale of public networks and their operators to new shareholders on a near indiscriminate basis. Compounding this, the once-maligned ‘legacy network’ is now the platform for growth in broadband in a majority of western countries. This decrepit copper is an engine of xDSL.

That’s quite a handsome legacy. Likewise, it represents a squandered inheritance for a fair proportion of the world’s population.

Something old…
Polemics aside, it’s worth either embracing or exploding the ‘heritage network’ concept. GSM networks are legacy networks, but most new 3G operators would move mountains to secure them and their incumbent customers. Copper loops are legacy networks but they are a broadband battleground now. Satellite systems support legacy networks but still function and still attract the voracious interest of venture capitalists.

This could be the crucial differentiator. Few individuals or organisations would turn away a legacy if it was offered in good faith. When that legacy is reclassified with ‘heritage’ status, things change. All of a sudden, it needs investment to support and maintain. It’s weak and waning. It needs sympathy in order to survive.

On the face of it, legacy and heritage networks are the same thing. The difference is that the latter are halfway along the path to being put in a museum, along with their owner-operators. The former are what you’ve got and what you make the best of – or risk losing everything.

Almost everyone reading this will have experienced the sinking feeling when, on buying a new computer, you open the newspaper next day to see the new improved version of your ‘new’ PC being proudly displayed in advertisements and so on. If you carry on home you will, admittedly, possess a ‘legacy’ computer. If you remain dumbstruck and never touch the thing, you’ve got the heritage version.
Jim Chalmers