A Terrible Mistake
One of my university lecturers once referred to ATM as A Terrible Mistake. But people keep trying to make it happen. The cell tax is a big deal and ATM proponents must have been betting on ASICs getting faster and ignoring the possibility that general purpose processors and hacks would win in the end.
Nortel and a few others tried to do an updated ATM called PBT (Provider Backbone Transport), which instead of all-singing all-dancing MPLS would be a stripped down version just for backbone networks. Basically Nortel wanted the Bellheads to pick their more Bell-oriented version of packet-switching. But Cisco was winning and Cisco was MPLS. PBT never got traction and Nortel couldn't compete with Cisco.
https://www.lightreading.com/business-management/nortel-preps-new-pbt-switch