This has nothing to do with digging up the roads, the article talks about the US basing their high speed lines around FiOS installs, where as Japan are simply upgrading their cable lines to use DOCSIS 3 instead of 1.
In the UK atm, the main (pretty much only) cable provider is doing the same, they are upgrading half of their network to run off DOCSIS 3 and are offering 50Mbit, but leaving the rest of the network still on DOCSIS 1 that'll run speeds of less than 20Mbit.
All it takes is for the ISP to replace the hardware in their buildings and send the customer a new cable modem that supports version 3.
Literally, no spade is involved at all in the process.
Top Ten Things Overheard At The ANSI C Draft Committee Meetings: (5) All right, who's the wiseguy who stuck this trigraph stuff in here?