No, they did not say that at all. They do not have the technology for cross-data center PF and DF. They have said they are aware of the suggestion but that it will take time to develop it. As someone that understands the subject, I understand why this is very complicated and will require a lot testing after it's done.
That was in reference to cross-region Data Center travel. We already have that. You can literally travel to the Oceania region right now and JP, EU and NA players can all play together there.are hesitating on implementing it because data center cultures can differ so greatly from one another.
They were saying they were open to allowing JP, EU and NA to visit eachother directly if there was demand for it and the cultures wouldn't clash.
The culture clash isn't really an issue. I played with JP players on the cloud DC and it was fine - we just all figured out how to use auto-translate to communicate. I fought things with them, setup PFs to play with them, asked them for help with things in /shout and even invited them to linkshells. They aren't really so different like everyone thinks.
When 7.0 released, we had JP players rushing to Materia for S ranks and "clashing" with NA and EU players. This was also fine. I guarantee JP has people who pull too quickly sometimes as well.