<Anyone know if the transmission speed of cable out does that of fiber?>
The speed, as in velocity, is not really relevant when comparing the two. The real question is which has a bigger "pipe" to send data down. In real world terms, cable is a New York City underground sewer and the copper wire your phone line uses is your garden hose. Fiber is somewhere in between, but doesn't actually reach into any households.
I'm sure any engineering types out there could give specific rates, but the name of the game is how to cram as many bits as possible into homes and businesses. There are advantages and disadvantages to all of the competing ideas - cable, for example, has very fast downstream rates (into your house) but is designed for one-way transmission. Upstream (back out) rates are a fraction of the down. The market is big enough that most of the ideas will find a niche in which to work and be profitable. ($800 billion market)
Certainly, if everyone had fiber running into the house or biz, it would be very competitive with cable. Both would allow all of the data-intensive applications currently unavailable to most of us. (Like real-time video) But it is unlikely that will happen in the next ten years.
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