I am from Japan and, much like you, I was getting "one red dot" connections for most of my games before my US version of the game was patched to 1.02 (same as Japanese version, making them compatible).
After the patch, I get random 2, 3 or 4 bars connections in about 25% of the games. The other 75%? "One red dot".
Some friends of mine bought the Japanese version of the game, but have the same problems, because their main PSN accounts are from US or Australia. Only one of my friends is actually running a Japanese version of the game on a Japanese PSN account, and he gets good connection most of the time.
Since my main PSN account is Japanese, I have considered buying the Japanese version of the game. But, since EA/Crytek were lazy and did not include English language support on the Japanese version, I will not buy it.