Renton has thrown its hat into a national competition to convince Google it’s the perfect testing ground for its new fiber optic network.

Google Fiber for Communities hopes to deliver Internet speeds up to 100 times faster than average to a few choice cities in the United States.

In hopes to prompt community involvement, the City of Renton has temporarily rebranded its logo in a Googlized, multi-colored font.

The stunt isn’t as extreme as others’, who temporarily renamed their city or jumped into icy Lake Superior.

The city plans to offer more practical incentives.

Administrators are considering a two-year break on utility taxes and waiving the city’s underground utility ordinance, offering use of the city’s telephone poles, said Alex Pietsch, administrator of Department of Community and Economic Development.

Google didn’t offer many details on its Web site, except that it hopes to offer about 1 gigabit per second connections for homes and businesses.

Multiple cities, communities and counties with populations 50,000 to 500,000 could be chosen.

Although the Pacific Northwest has a tech-savvy edge, most of the large cities in King County – including Seattle, Bellevue and Kirkland – are attempting to woo the Internet giant.

Renton is a microcosm of the Puget Sound region, Pietsch said.

“We’re not 500,000 people, so we think we’re a community that is going to be easier to work with,” he said.

Renton takes the cake with ethnic and socioeconomic diversity, he said. “Their investment would do a lot of good here.”

The City Council plans to approve a resolution Monday, inviting Google or anyone offering to build advance broadband networks to do so in the city.

Mayor Denis Law announced the city’s intent in his State of the City speech Wednesday.

“Our city is the ideal proving ground for Google’s groundbreaking fiber network,” he said. “It is only fitting for Google to choose Renton to launch a technology that will catapult us all into a new era of discovery.”

The unheard of Internet speed would likely attract high-tech companies.

“We’d certainly be using that as another arrow in our quiver in our business recruitment efforts,” Pietsch said.

The purpose of the project is to experiment and learn, according to the Google Web site.

“We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it’s creating new bandwidth-intensive ‘killer apps’ and services, or other uses we can’t yet imagine,” according to the site.

Google is enforcing a strict “apply online” rule, telling government agencies not to call.

In addition to government applications, residents can nominate their cities for the upgrade, which Renton is encouraging its citizens do.

“Were also encouraging the community to get behind the bid and to do what they can to make it known to Google that Renton is a great place to demonstrate that technology,” Pietsch said.