Google Inc said it planned to build a high-speed broadband network, as the top Internet search company continues to explore new business areas.

Google said on Wednesday that it would build and test an ultra high-speed broadband network in a small number of locations in the United States. The company announced the project in a blog posting.

The company promised to deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster that what most Americans have access to, and said it would offer the service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and up to 500,000 people.

Google called the project an experiment and said it hoped to see what developers and users can do with super-fast speeds.

The company said the network would be open access, and users would have a choice of multiple service providers.

Shares of Mountain View, California-based Google fell less than 1 percent to $532 in late morning trading on the Nasdaq.

(Reporting by Gabriel Madway; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

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