Well, to follow up with the Time Warner issues here in Rochester , Ny…  Here’s a breakdown from the New York Times regarding cost comparison between US & Japanese broadband.

Slashdot | The NYT Compares Broadband Upgrade Costs in US, Japan.

zxjio writes with this excerpt from a New York Times article about just how much networking infrastructure costs vary between the US and Japan:“Pretty much the fastest consumer broadband in the world is the 160-megabit-per-second service offered by J:Com, the largest cable company in Japan. Here’s how much the company had to invest to upgrade its network to provide that speed: $20 per home passed. … Verizon is spending an average of $817 per home passed to wire neighborhoods for its FiOS fiber optic network and another $716 for equipment and labor in each home that subscribes, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. … The experience in Japan suggests that the major cable systems in the United States might be able to increase the speed of their broadband service by five to 10 times right away. They might not need to charge much more for it than they do now and they would still make as much money.”