The way I understand it is that Avaya was formed out of Lucent's decision to concentrate on producing Central Office equipment (such as the WaveStar).
I guess Lucent had 2 choices, sell off or split apart. So, they split the company and out popped Avaya.
If I could predict the future, I would speculate that the big players in telecommunication will fully exit the TDM market and go full bore into VOIP (Avaya is in the process of doing this and it is a safe bet that other manufacturers, such as Nortel, are watching).
To fill in the void, manufacturers from other parts of the world could market small TDM systems and such equipment would fill what will become a niche market.
