rategies Are Met by Rule Changes horribly oversaturated and almost completely wiped out by the DLEC melt- down. The renamed company released a more modern small switch, the CSX, and stayed independent until 2002, when its cash ran low and it was acquired by a private equity firm, Heico Corporation. It continued to sell to CLECs but also added rural ILECs to its target market. Sonus Networks was another switch vendor start-up, founded in Massa- chusetts in 1998 and aimed at the large-scale market. Its core products were pri- marily marketed as VoIP media gateways, but they also had ATM and TDM capabilities and could comfortably handle large-scale PRI offload applications. End-office applications, however, required third-party software, typically from Broadsoft. Its products met considerable success, taking a leading role in carrier IP networks, though not very much with CLECs; most of its key customers were in the long distance business. Sonus went public early, taking advantage of the boom to go public in 2000. Its stock went near $80 that year but fell by 2002 to, at one low point, about a quarter a share. It eked its way back up, peak- ing near $8 in early 2004 before slipping as it discovered that previous years' financial results needed to be restated. Just up the road from Sonus, another Massachusetts start-up, Convergent Networks, also built a large-scale switch, initially with TDM and ATM capabili- ties and later VoIP. Aimed at PRI offload applications, Convergent-ironically headquartered in the former Wang Tower, a monument to the 1980s meltdown of the minicomputer business-was somewhat less successful than Sonus. It had one large customer, Global NAPs, a CLEC that provided large-scale virtual NXX offload in numerous states. When the company's financial situation became dire in 2002, it was acquired by an affiliate of Global NAPs. This made the Quincy, Mass.-based CLEC an interesting anomaly-a local exchange car- rier that owned a switch manufacturer. But it was no Bell System; it was a melt- down bargain