Industry analyst Dave Burstein has been crunching the numbers from most major cable operators, and believes that 10% of all cable customers have access to DOCSIS 3.0 technology (and faster speeds) today. According to Burstein, those numbers will jump to 50% in 2010, fueled largely by Comcast's promise that they'll have their entire footprint DOCSIS 3.0 ready by the end of 2010. Given the estimated $50-$100 per home investment cost, Burstein thinks we'll see 70-80% nationwide DOCSIS 3.0 coverage by 2012 or 2013.

Of course the big question will be just how big the coverage gap will be; carriers in uncompetitive areas doing battle with slow DSL may not see the competitive necessity to move past DOCSIS 2.0. With caps, de-prioritization systems and (if many ISPs get their way) metered billing now becoming the norm, by 2013 the discussion may be less about how fast your connection is -- and more about just how fully you're able to use it. Customers may ultimately prefer slower connections if they aren't capped, throttled, and filtered.