A Village Has What All of Italy Wants: The Internet

Verrua Savoia, Italy, is a rural hilltop village, where a 17th-century fortress is a reminder of how residents warded off invaders for hundreds of years, might seem the last place in Italy to find a wireless Internet connection. After all, roughly a third of Italians have never used the Internet, giving the country one of the lowest rates of usage in Europe. Residents can recall providers laughing over the phone at their request for an Internet hookup, or the perplexed look of technicians upon arriving in Verrua Savoia, where just 1,500 residents live in dozens of small settlements spread over nearly 20 miles of valleys and steep hillsides in northern Italy. Even so, some here believed they had the right to join the digital world, to pay their bills, do their banking or make a doctor’s appointment online.