Today was day one of Citizencon and CIG revealed a lot of stuff that shows they're still working to give players the game they want. Most of it was actually tech to answer the scalability problem for everyone wondering how they're going to get to 100 star systems when they still only have 1
Personally, I don't think they should be aiming for 100 anymore, even if it was promised. That number was for the original pitch and was arbitrarily high since it was for a much shallower and easier to create game
I would say private server is more what you're referring to, also CIG's wording, but maybe agree to disagree. A quick search says that they haven't cancelled that feature, but it'll appropriately be the very last thing they work on
the common understanding of "dedicated server" is a server binary you can download and run yourself. a "private server" is usually still hosted on the company's hardware.
I can understand you have different criteria for dedicated servers, but private servers are certainly not generally characterized by still being on 1st party hardware. You need only look at private servers for Minecraft, WoW, and the like
minecraft server binaries are a prime example of a "dedicated server". tf2 is another. the alternative is a "listen server", where one player acts as server.
note that the term's use in gaming has very little to do with the concept of a dedicated server in general use, aka a machine dedicated to running a service. in multiplayer games a dedicated server is just the name for a binary that contains no client.
anyway, the important distinction is whether the means for the game to continue existing is in the hands of the players or the company.