The city of Topeka recently changed their name to Google in the hopes that the search giant would select their city for their trial deployment of 1 Gbps fiber to the home service. The city of Greensboro, North Carolina is sending gifts to Google headquarters, and has earmarked $50,000 to promote Google's project. Activists have set up more than 70 Facebook pages in the hopes that Google comes to their towns or cities. The United States has apparently gone "gaga for Google broadband," according to Business Week:As we've noted, the excitement around Google fiber says two things. One, it's pretty clear that there's a significant number of towns and cities that aren't happy about the current level of broadband in their markets. Two, Google's amazingly managed to turn thousands of people into Google marketing representatives without delivering a single bit -- simply by tapping into that frustration and demand for better service.

Google was already public enemy number one among broadband providers for the company's positions on network neutrality, competition, and the use of white space spectrum to deliver wireless connectivity (all of which are driven by a desire to sell ads). Expect the incumbent carriers to get more vocal as this campaign continues to highlight their failures to deliver next-generation connectivity in most markets. Carriers have been working with Cisco to deliver a public relations counterpunch next week.