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GREENSBORO — High-tech boosters from Duluth to Greensboro are excited this fall, hoping that Google will soon choose a city where it will build a high-speed Internet system.

If they’re wrong, it won’t be for lack of hints from Google.

The company said in late October that it has chosen Stanford University as a test site for the network, which promises to transmit 1 gigabit per second of data through big fiber optic cables. That lets Internet users transmit and receive data up to 100 times faster than they’re able to now.

The main event remains Google’s selection of a city that could serve from 50,000 to 500,000 customers.

“We still plan to announce our selected community or communities by the end of the year,” James Kelly, the product manager for Google Fiber, wrote on Google’s official blog.

And Greensboro’s Jay Ovittore, the community activist who worked with Greensboro city government to help coordinate its application for the Google program, said Google could winnow its list of 1,100 applicants down to 30 and start city visits by December.

Ovittore joined an online discussion Tuesday about the application experience with leaders from other cities that are considered prime applicants.

Greensboro was ranked among those top 10 cities in an independent report compiled in the spring by Steketee Greiner Co., an Internet marketing and research company.

The company looked at about 100 applicants and ranked them according to word-of-mouth interest in Google, social network interest, media reports and other factors that indicate a community’s desire for Google Fiber.

The Web seminar Tuesday, at the Internet site for Broadband Properties Magazine, included Ovittore and representatives from other leading cities including Duluth, Minn., Topeka, Kan., and Asheville.

Jim Baller, an attorney who represents Google, was the moderator of the discussion.

He said Google is taking the applications very seriously.

“Google read every one of those 1,100 applications,” he told the group.

Panel members agreed that Google’s masterstroke in announcing this program was that it got cities talking about high-speed Internet as a component of community development that would not have otherwise considered the issue.

Ovittore said that in Greensboro, cooperation from the City Council and the city manager’s office was just as energetic as it was from members of the community. And it crossed party lines.

“It didn’t seem like a red or a blue issue,” he said, “it seemed like an everybody issue.”

Cities took varied approaches. Asheville got heavy assistance from economic developers at its chamber of commerce.

Topeka created a group called “Think Big Topeka.”

And the “twin ports” area united Duluth, Minn., and Superior, Wis., to get 1,000 signatures from people who said they would sign up for high-speed Internet immediately.

Economic development, however, was the No. 1 issue in every community.

Think of broadband service as electricity was 100 years ago, said Christopher Swanson, of Duluth. People weren’t sure what it would become, but they knew they would be left behind if they didn’t adapt.

The Internet may have potential uses that exist only in science fiction, but until we try, the panelists said, we won’t know.

Ovittore said high-speed fiber is already in use by the state’s universities, but Greensboro will benefit particularly because business and residents could connect more easily with them.

“Colleges are big business in North Carolina,” he said.

All agreed that curiosity remains high in their communities, with people persistently wondering what has happened with Google Fiber.

Jared Starkey of Topeka said: “My fiancee’s grandmother is constantly saying, 'What’s going on with this?’”

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com