I have -never- said it's facts but sorry if it coming off that way. I've based my comments on unofficial census that indicated there is roughtly 250-260k active players in NA data centres. Among these we don't know how many that actually lives in NA as there is still plenty EU players playing on NA servers.
However just follow the support threads here and on Reddit I'd say we have a few dozens players. We have no idea how many that is affected but I still think its a minority that have voiced their concerns and frustrations. And SE is not gonna release any official numbers where their players IP comes from.
I'm not aware and shouldn't be aware what other companies handles similar situations. I work in ISP myself so I have a little ground to stand on. If SE is correct in what they say, that they have a solid connection to the data center they can't really do much. The fault is at NTT and I agree SE should be making demands on NTT but that all they can do. They might as well be locked in contracts so they can't really move to a different data center if they wished and if it makes sense from a business perspective. Switching data centre isn't cheap.
So again from their perspective, say this affects .. 10k/250k with higher ping and occational random disconnects from the service, it going be hard to justify a move.
They should however look into open another data centre to make it better for more people and I hope they are looking into that.
Don't really have a comment, you're spot on on this point.