.eu co-sponsors Wi-Fi hotspot in Pisa, Italy
Brussels and Pisa, 12 September 2011 - .eu is joining a Wi-Fi hotspot initiative in Pisa, Italy, announced today during an official visit by Pisa’s mayor to the .eu registry’s regional office in the city.
There is a growing demand from tourists to get online using their smart phones and tablet computers while visiting Pisa. The municipality of Pisa has responded by offering free Wi-Fi through an expanding number of access points. .eu is co-sponsor of the new hotspot serving the Borgo Stretto area, close to the Italian office of EURid, the .eu registry. This hotspot will be activated on 26 September 2011.
"This is another important step forward for the digital city, made possible thanks to one of the companies that operates in our city and helps make Pisa the Italian web capital. Pisa is proud to be the home of EURid’s office for the countries bordering the Mediterranean," said Marco Filippeschi, the mayor of Pisa, during his visit to EURid’s office.
“We manage .eu’s southern European operations from our office in Pisa and I am pleased to be sponsoring a Wi-Fi hotspot that brings benefits to the whole city,” said Marc Van Wesemael, General Manager of EURid. “We celebrated .eu’s fifth birthday in April and it is fitting to welcome the mayor of Pisa during our landmark year.”
Mayor Filippeschi was given a conducted tour of .eu’s office where he met Mr Van Wesemael and local staff. The mayor also officially announced .eu’s co-sponsorship of the local area’s Wi-Fi hotspot. The other sponsor is the bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena.
.eu in Italy
In Italy, there are currently more than 197 000 .eu domain names registered to Italian businesses, organisations and individuals. In the year to Q2 2011, Italy saw a 5.1% growth in .eu registrations. EURid’s regional office in Pisa is responsible for liaising with domain name registrars in Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain.
"We chose .eu as our website extension to give our bar a European touch," said Jacopo Menconi, the owner of Millibar, a bar on Via Palestro in Pisa with a .eu website, millibar.eu. "Pisa is teeming with tourists and Erasmus students from all over Europe and .eu helps with Internet searches for European visitors to Pisa. It is a bit different and communicates to a territory that is not only exclusively Italian."
Wi-Fi in Pisa
The municipality of Pisa aims to create a ‘Wi-Fi route’ so visitors can connect to the Internet at tourist attractions across the city. Hotspot access is free of charge and connection instructions are in English and Italian. More information about Pisa’s Wi-Fi initiative is available at: http://www.comune.pisa.it/wifi/.
For media information, please contact:
Catherine Dowdell, PR Officer Phone: +46 (0)8 5063 74 12
Email: press@eurid.eu Press room: http://www.eurid.eu/en/press-room
About .eu and EURid
The .eu domain ranks among the ten largest top-level domains in the world, connecting 500 million people in 27 EU countries to one Internet identity. More than three million .eu names have been registered since the domain opened for registration in 2005. Many companies use a .eu website as a practical solution to convey a clear European identity, including Bridgestone, Century 21, Hyundai, the MAN Group, Microsoft Corporation and the UniCredit Group.
EURid is the not-for-profit organisation appointed by the European Commission to operate the .eu top-level domain. EURid works with over 850 accredited registrars and provides support in the 23 official EU languages. With headquarters in Brussels (Belgium), EURid also has regional offices in Pisa (Italy), Prague (the Czech Republic) and Stockholm (Sweden). More information at http://www.eurid.eu.
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