How Risky is This Business of Networks?

Recent industry experiences have shown that the challenging technical obstacles overcome in planning new access, core, or wireless networks and services are often followed by significant implementation obstacles encountered during development and deployment. These obstacles present risks - risks to the business of networks. What are the most common risks? How probable is it that they will occur? What can their impacts be on costs, revenues, and schedules? How can we best anticipate, quantify and reduce them? This paper considers the science of risk management brought to bear on developing and delivering profitable complex network solutions. Aggregate results, learning about the risks unique to next-generation networks/services, and successful risk mitigations are presented from multiple network deployments. We consider the financial impacts both on infrastructure builders and on service providers involved. Risks are identified and, more importantly, quantified across areas such as network design, OAM&P, and service migration.