I was there !! I know.. I know most people used dial-up, I also know a lot of people still use dial-up. DSL was in most large regions and cities, I had (as a normal user) DSL well before 2000.
Whats the dot-com boom/bust got to do with it, who made you boss? I don't mind others opinions, but I do mind historical inaccuracies. I had DSL in 96 and I certainly was not a trailblazer. 96 is before 2000.
The 1980s saw the development of techniques for broadband communications that allowed the limit to be greatly extended. A patent was filed in 1979 for the use of existing telephone wires for both telephones and data terminals that were connected to a remote computer via a digital data carrier system.[6] The motivation for digital subscriber line technology was the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) specification proposed in 1984 by the CCITT (now ITU-T) as part of Recommendation I.120, later reused as ISDN Digital Subscriber Line (IDSL). Employees at Bellcore (now Telcordia Technologies) developed Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) by placing wide-band digital signals above the existing baseband analog voice signal carried between telephone company telephone exchanges and customers on conventional twisted pair cabling facilities,[7] and filed a patent in 1988.[8]
Until the late 1990s, the cost of digital signal processors for DSL was prohibitive. All types of DSL employ highly complex digital signal processing algorithms to overcome the inherent limitations of the existing twisted pair wires. Due to the advancements of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) technology, the cost of the equipment associated with a DSL deployment lowered significantly. The two main pieces of equipment are a digital subscriber line access multiplexer (DSLAM) at one end and a DSL modem at the other end.
The cost of DSL (that had been around for years) dropped by the late 1990's. Yes, the internet did take off on dial-up, but compared to how much it took off since cheap, wide spread broadband and now wireless. It took off from dial-up, it exploded since DSL and broadband wireless.