The cable industry is showing off their next generation broadband cable modems, which promise much faster speeds. The cable companies are under some pressure from the fiber rollouts of the phone companies.
There are some problems, however. The new technology continues to rely on copper to the home, and in fact, the "new" technology simply involves using four TV channels instead of two to carry broadband data. It is still a hybrid system that uses a fifty year old cable TV design to carry data. It's main advantage is that it is cheap to upgrade.
The second problem is that the cable companies, like the phone companies, want to be the gatekeeper for advanced services. If you want VoIP service, they don't want to offer a choice of providers; they want to sell you their service, at their price, and this will become a bigger problem as time goes on and truly open systems start offering a much wider range of prices and services than closed systems.
Finally, cable companies are anti-economic development, in the sense that they see themselves as selling "entertainment," not business class services. I had a problem recently with my cable modem service and was told the normal repair time was two weeks because the Internet service I was buying was "entertainment" and did not require any faster response. This kind of attitude makes it either impossible to work from home or much more expensive. Some cable companies will sell a "business class" service for your home, charging much more for exactly the same service.
The bottom line for communities is simple: Do you want a large incumbent with its headquarters many states away deciding your economic development future, or do you want to more control locally? If your answer is the latter, local broadband investments can help energize economic development and actually provide funds for other community and economic development projects.