ncially viable buyer and a technically competent, competitive service provider. To be effective, the contract must spell out requirements in terms of functional de- liverables, including specific service characteristics, sometimes re- ferred to as a service level agreement (SLA). Both parties to such an agreement will be well served by a two-phase process. The first phase includes defining and provisioning facilities PRACTICAL IP AND TELECOM FOR BROADCAST ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS and services, followed by a test and acceptance process to certify the deliverables meet or exceed performance as outlined in the con- tract. The second phase is commencing and continuing operations with monitoring procedures based on strategically located monitor points. Cost-effective, mission critical content transport networks become even more effective when relying on judiciously applied standards. Many standards bodies, including AES, ATSC, DVB, EBU, ETSI, IEEE, ITU, ISO, SMPTE, T1, and perhaps others, develop and main- tain standards that can be leveraged to advantage. In general, content transport networks exhibit high levels of avail- ability, reliability, and robustness, and low levels of bit errors or high bit-to-error ratio (BER) performance. Availability means that the network resource is available for use as specified in the terms and conditions of the contract. Reliability means that the network will operate within the limits of the performance and headroom characteristics specified in the con- tract. Robustness means that when an outage or out-of-performance condi- tion occurs, the network detects the condition and restores the level of service within the timeframes specified in the contract. BER is a measure of the bits transported without error, compared to the number of transmission errors over some specific time. THE NATURE OF TELECOM NETWORKS Telecom or common carrier networks have evolved over many years. The basic elements include switching, transmission, and network management. Telecom network operations run 24/