Thanks to Mind Over Machines' Tom Loveland's pointer to this Hartford Courant story on one of the many towns lining up for a shot at Google's gigabit broadband.

WEST HARTFORD — - Just like someone buying a lottery ticket, the town is taking a chance on winning a fortune — an opportunity to partner with Google and gain a fiber-optic network with Internet speed and capacity up to 100 times faster than most people use today.

"We're applying and we think we have a leg up," West Hartford Finance Director Chris Johnson said Wednesday. "We have a glass [fiber-optic] network that the town bought a few years ago. We're connecting all town buildings to it, so we already have a good chunk of the network, which can be extended."

Google set March 26 as the filing deadline. It's too early to tell how many communities will apply.

But news stories published after the Google announcement indicate there are likely to be dozens. So far, the list of probable applicants includes Washington, D.C.; Pittsburgh; Seattle; Duluth, Minn.; Madison, Wis.; Greensboro, N.C; Columbia, Mo.; and Rochester, N.Y.