ATM was designed to work as a multiservices-network fabric. It accommodates various types of transport services including frame relay, cell relay, circuit emulation, and switched multimegabit data service (SMDS), as well as various types of user traffic, including data, voice, and video. The blending of these services and traffic types within a single network allows service providers to manage all of them in a consistent management environment and to present a consistent interface to the customer for all types of services. This also allows service providers to coexist with existing non–IP equipment within their own and their customers' networks.

SONET/SDH routers were designed to handle IP traffic only. Service providers who operate these networks must also run separate networks for frame relay, leased line, cell relay, and SMDS traffic. In many cases, these other networks are being consolidated onto ATM backbones to provide the advantages listed previously.