It was popular primarily because OSPF didn't scale well with hundreds to thousands of routers with the minimal CPU power even large core routers had.
But for a telco, the fact that you didn't have to setup IP connectivity in order for routers to see each other, was also a crucial ability.
This also meant autoconfiguration or supporting non-ip protocols (like routed ethernet) is simpler, though I will admit that OSPFv3 adding default use of link local V6 for router interfaces made the gap smaller.
but yeah, I saw one piece of SONET crap hanging off a ctunnel that spoke CLNP back in maybe 2012 or 2013? haven't seen much of it, but still learned the ctunnel stuff back in '09 because it still could occasionally rear its head.