My first up-close look at a central office was an unusual one: The Hinsdale, Ill., CO had been badly burned in the infamous 1988 Mother's Day fire, and I decided to drive out and see for myself what remained. Obviously, there was no touring the building, but from a safe distance what struck me most was the vast amount of scorched cabling that seemed to be everywhere.

The impact of the Hinsdale CO's destruction — some local and long-distance services were disrupted for weeks — changed my thinking about these intentionally nondescript buildings. The Hinsdale experience also changed the industry's thinking, prompting landmark changes in the way networks were designed in order to avoid the single point of failure that one building represented.

Those changes have been among many in the CO landscape over the last two decades. The digital switching revolution dramatically reduced the size of CO equipment; changes in federal laws opened COs to competitors and their co-location cages; and demand for Internet access required new data gear for DSL and later, in some cases, fiber access.

As my colleague Ed Gubbins discusses in this issue's cover story, the CO is changing again, and this time, it's beginning to look more like a data center. IP has become the backbone for converged services, and thus we are seeing some off-the-shelf data gear vying for space in the buildings that once housed equipment developed by the telecom industry for the telecom industry.

In many respects, this last change is one of the most profound, and it already is having major ramifications. As I learned in conversations with telco executives, they are challenged today to find the talent required to manage and deal with the IT gear the industry is adopting while still understanding the ways of the telecom industry.

There also is the recognition that the innovations that will drive the telecom space in the future now often come from outside forces. The telecom industry's ability to survive and thrive in this new environment likely will depend on how quickly it adapts to this latest round of change, and how quickly its COs are adapted as well.

Speaking of innovation, the nomination process for Telephony's Innovation Awards is well under way, and the June 30 deadline looms. Just visit http://telephonyonline.com/telephonylive08/awards/index.html to get started.