Boring Broadband

David Walker offers a boring prognosis for broadband.

In 2002, broadband Internet is about to become just like dial-up, only with a permanent connection and no delays...

On the current evidence, most broadband Internet users like the content of the Internet as it is. They just want to use the Net any time they like and not wait too long for things to happen.

I do not know which is bigger:

1. the bets that investors have been willing to make on the theory that people really wish that their personal computers would turn into television sets;
2. the mountain of evidence that consumers want no such thing;

Discussion Question. If broadband is valued as a more efficient way to receive web pages and email, rather than as a way to obtain rich multimedia, what does this say about the value of the merger between AOL and Time-Warner?