The only pricing I've seen for Coax, Cat5e and Speaker is based on how many drops, not sq ft. In Charlotte, around $50-$100 per drop (speaker counts as 2 for stereo, 5+ for surround). The security pricing I've seen started with a base package (not enough sensors for a condo) and then added on from there for glass breaks, motion and contacts. Most were $50 per plus $15 for the rough in wiring. I'm assuming that up north, the prices will be higher, but I don't know why the cost structure would be different.

Yes, you'd need to split a single signal for all of the connections in the house. But you're going to have to do that no matter what -- at the end of the line, there's only one piece of cable coming in from the cable company. It's just a question of whether you split it where it comes in from the street, and pull multiple runs to your enclosure, or you pull one run to your enclosure and split it all in there. You can do it either way, but when I have a choice I'm inclined to split it at the structured wiring enclosure (so just one run from the street). It's nicer to keep the majority of your splitters and connectors inside, out of the elements. And if you need to amplify, you can have your amplifier inside the enclosure, with an unsplit signal from the street as its input.

my thingking... I'm inventive and handy with a ships auger and masonary bit! Add it as you need it. My wifi with 100% signal is actually moving around 5 mbyte/s across the room to/from the router. When I get fios I'm not going to be happy if I dont have at least one wired computer for large downloads. Probably wont be happy with my laptop wifi speeds. Takes it a long time now to move even a CD from the Desktop to laptop with wifi. Network cable is like WoW speed after using wifi. I keep a 100 foot network cable coiled at ready and stretch it out to my laptop for things like the soon coming xp sp3 upgrade (350mb) & also for that occasional DVD I want to download and watch. Wifi just is too slow for bigger byte stuff. Wifi DVD downloads and sending movies to set-top media center on wifi, sucks. Other than that kind of stuff, you're right. Don't really need a built in wired local LAN .. networking with all the wifi and other plug instant connect doohickeys is pretty simple, but definitely much slower. Someday you're going to find yourself with a 10 - 30 megaByte internet connection with fios or cable and you;ll not be able to utilize that connection to its potential with wifi though.

that is a reasonable price IF it includes the wire. if it does not, then buy the materials and do it yourself. since the walls are open this won't be that big a deal to run. do not wait until the sheetrock goes up or the price will likely triple.