Joey Durel likes to describe himself as a private-sector guy. Before he was elected mayor of Lafayette, La., in 2003, Durel, a Republican, ran a chain of pet stores and several restaurant franchises. He chaired the Greater Lafayette Chamber of Commerce. Then, in his first months in office, he took what still seems to him a natural step: He agreed to have Lafayette's municipal electric, water, and sewer utility run fiber-optic cable all the way to the city's homes. It would compete with copper wire that Lafayette's two commercial telecom outfits already had in place, but both had said Lafayette's market-just over 60,000 people-was too small to justify fiber.
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