MADISON, Wis. -- Google is preparing a project touted to yield Internet connections a hundred times faster than what's available today and many local officials and businesses said that they hope the company will select the Madison area as the test site.

Google, which is currently the world's biggest search engine company, appears interested in venturing into the infrastructure business. It's seeking to become involved in how people connect to the Internet.

These days, people who are curious about something can easily "Google it." Now, Google wants to help its users find what they're looking for much faster. The search giant unveiled the plan on Thursday in a video announcement for what's called "Gigabit Internet to the Home," asking for cities to serve as test sites. Some Madison leaders want to make sure it is one of them.

The project intends to allow users to download a DVD worth of content -- nearly 5 gigabytes -- in 40 seconds.

Alder Mark Clear, who also owns an information technology company, got a blazing fast reaction to the news.

"Within a few minutes, I had a dozen people telling me about it and saying, 'Madison needs to be on the case for this,'" he said.

City officials have formed a team to submit an official application to Google, which has an office in Madison.

Clear said he thinks the city might have a shot.

"I think it is realistic," he said.

The plan could offer such options as high-definition television deliverable on demand to a resident's computer.

"There are certainly lots of other possibilities in terms of real-time communications, things like that, that you just can't do given the infrastructure we have today," Clear said.

Kevin Conroy, president and CEO of Madison biotech firm Exact Sciences, said that the news opens new doors to productivity.

"Today, there are files that we can't even receive," he said. "We need to break up into multiple chunks to get them. So, you take something that should be instantaneous and it takes a couple of people time to break this up on both ends,"

Conroy said he believes becoming a test site could make Madison an even bigger technology hotbed, opening doors to new business.

"I think that what you're going to see is applications that we can't even begin to imagine today because of the bandwidth log jams that we have," Conroy said.

The project's faster connection speeds would be achieved by building a fiber to the home infrastructure. For the first time, fiber-optic cable and not copper cable would come straight to people's homes.

In theory, Google would open their network to other service providers, effectively making it a public utility.

Stay tuned to WISC-TV and Channel 3000 for continuing coverage.