"The challenge is certainly more demanding in places like Buffalo or Pittsburgh, which on a metro level are shrinking but are spreading out, " says Robert Puentes, a fellow at the Brookings Institution.

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These differences also exist on the metro level.

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Many carriers, including phone and cable companies, now build metro-level Ethernet networks, which are more cost-effective than optics because customers already use Ethernet cable in their internal networks.

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Because prices turned around at different times in different metros, and some metros have seen prices rise for 2 years or more, metro-level inventory changes show what might happen to inventory nationally as the price rebound continues.

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Geographically, Web users can be found in all corners of the U.S. But according to researcher Inteco, the level of Net use in several major metro areas exceeds the U.S. average.

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In what the researchers said is the largest project to examine leadership and stress, the study recruited 148 leaders and 65 non-leaders from the Boston metro area and from a Harvard executive education program designed for senior-level officials in the public sector, which included members of the military.

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