Not really. TDM is a multiplexing scheme. Its use in telephony... [snip] ... A device (the PAD - packet assembler/disassembler) will put them right. This is a tremendous advantage because you need not be concerned with the TIMING of the stream. Clocks don't matter. After all this is not real time traffic, and latency was acceptable. All of these are requirements that make T-Carrier what it is. ...
Yes, we are clearly moving (rapidly) to an all-packet based world. This is of course an economic decision for the reasons you cited.
However, I do beg to differ concerning the history of T-carrier. It was designed to carry voice from day 1, not data. It was concieved from the beginning to be the sucessor to the N- and O- FDM trunk systems of the day. Talking about clocks not mattering and packet re-assembly as a being "requirements that make T-Carrier what it is" is just plain wrong. T-Carrier is, was, and always will be a synchronous transport. Clocks and timing sources are one of the first things one looks at when a T1 goes down....
In fact, early attempts at using T1 to carry actual data resulted in all sorts of worm-cans being opened up. In the days before B8ZS, it was not easy to pump real binary data over a T1 without basically repackaging it into 7-bit bites. The reasons for this (and this whole digression) is swingly wildly off-topic though, so I'll sign off now.
