An American city, Topeka, has renamed itself "Google" for a month, as it bids for the chance to host the search engine's new high-speed broadband network

The city, the capital of Kansas, will unofficially be known as "Google, Kansas u2013 the capital city of fibre optics" during March.

Officials in the town, which has a population of 1,25,000, came up with the idea for "just a bit of fun" to help boost its chances of taking part in the trial of the search giant's new broadband service.

Google last month announced it was to build the experimental, ultra high-speed broadband network across America. It said the trial would provide up to 5,00,000 people with high speed broadband at speeds of up to one gigabit per second -- 200 times faster than the average UK speed of 5 mb/s.

The service will be an extension of Google's existing fibre network, which links its various data centres around the US. Cities near these centres will be asked to nominate themselves to take part in the trial.

As a result a frenzy of ideas have been put forward including from thousands of Americans across the country, Google said.