I am using leviton and will be running cat6 cabling throughout the house. The cost with the walls opened up is small and I will take a wired port of wireless any day for fixed devices. Right now I have it slated to have a 2 cat6 cables and 1 RG6 coax ran to 2 different walls in each bedroom. In the media room and the family room I will have 4 cat6 drops and 2 RG6 drops at each location. All these cables will be ran (in smurf pipe) back to a communications closet where I will house the router and switch. I will also be running conduit from the first floor comm room to the attic. I will have 2 locations where I will have access points. All in all I have about 36 drops that I can use for either phone or data. My comm room is really just a portion of a closet in the media room, nothing fancy. Just my thoughts but I am a network engineer :D

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.

In the much older telephone world, one of the Bell subsidiaries installed all the wiring in the house and also provided the phone instruments and any special devices. If it broke they would fix anything, including replacing the phone. However, it also meant that you could not add phones or connections without going through the phone company. All this changed during the Bell breakup and deregulation, and we added a demarcation point where maintenance shifted from the phone company to the homeowner. In most cases we now have two boxes on the outside of the house, one for cable and one for phone, and this is the demarcation point. All wiring outside this point is the provider's responsibility, and everything inside belongs to the homeowner (inside plant vs. outside plant). They can turn service on or off by simply opening that box and making or breaking the connection. Cable companies confuse the inside/outside responsibility split because they really want you to keep paying for services. They are not legally bound to fix any of the cable inside your house, but if they don't fix it you probably won't buy as many services. Bruce

Those are ridiculously high prices. You are being gouged. And I say that as someone who lives in a very high priced housing area. At a minimum, ask for a detailed bid: materials (which should be minimal), hours involved, and hourly rate.