Cities On Line It was an Italian company that operated in the telecommunications sector as an Internet service provider.
The company was founded in March 1995 with the name of Catania On Line Srl with the aim of becoming the reference provider in the city of Etna, which at the time was in full swing due to the emergence of the technological hub known as Etna Valley. Rapid growth led the company to expand into various cities in eastern Sicily with the formula of franchising. This factor, in addition to the desire to overcome the original status of a local operator, led to the decision to change its name to Cities On Line. In this period of great expansion, the provider stood out for some innovative and, in some ways, pioneering initiatives in the Italian panorama. Its was the first newscast in streaming live on behalf of the regional broadcaster Telecolor.
In 1998, it was the first Internet service provider in Europe to achieve ISO 9001 quality certification.
Fascinated by the explosion that the dot-com economy is experiencing at the turn of the millennium, the management On the one hand, the company invested in research and development, particularly in the nascent VoIP technology sponsored by networking giant Cisco Systems. On the other, it began working to list the company on the stock exchange in the then-nascent Nuovo Mercato Telematico index (Numtel, later renamed All Stars). With this in mind, the company was transformed into a joint-stock company, prestigious offices were opened in Rome and Milan, and membership was signed with the AIIP and the MIX in Milan.
From a strategic point of view, an agreement is signed with two top players in the net economy global, such as the aforementioned Cisco and Hewlett-Packard, with whose contribution it builds a national network that provides Internet and innovative services throughout Italy.
Ahead of eBay, which would land in Italy only two years later, at the end of 1999 the FreeCommerce, a web platform that allows anyone to open a virtual store online, free of charge. In early 2000, Cities On Line became the first Italian operator to sell VoIP services with prepaid cards. The most ambitious goal, however, was to create a fiber optic network covering Sicily and connecting to other major national and pan-European fiber optic networks in Rome. To this end, a department was created to develop the project, which signed an agreement with Alcatel and the ANAS consortium. Excavation and installation work began in September 2000.
With these premises, the company began its IPO process, entrusting the fate of the "Cities on line phenomenon" to the promoter Euromobiliare SIM of the CREDEM group. This was the period in Italy during which the billion-dollar listings of Tiscali and e. Biscom (which would become Fastweb in 2004) were recorded, as well as other impressive listings by IT companies such as Finmatica.
The financial and managerial effort required to meet the many ambitious challenges placed the company at considerable risk, as its fate depended on the outcome of its stock market listing, scheduled for the end of 2000. However, the bursting of the New Economy speculative bubble initially postponed the listing until the following May, and then forced it to be permanently shelved. The company's difficulties immediately forced a series of downsizings, causing significant disruption to its customers. The emergence of "free internet" (dial-up), introduced by Tiscali and soon followed by Infostrada with Libero, further weakened the company, which gradually lost its market hold. Shortly thereafter, it gradually withdrew, being dismembered and liquidated in 2002.