COLLE DI TORA, Italy — The last time a customer tried to pay by card in Anna Rita Pani’s grocery store in Colle di Tora, a small town outside Rome, things got a bit awkward.
“We had to wait 15 minutes for the card reader to work… Meanwhile, we were just standing there, staring at each other,” she told AFP.
Her card reader works with wifi, but Colle di Tora is one of the least connected towns in Italy — itself a digital laggard compared with the rest of the European Union.
Closing the gap is a priority for Prime Minister Mario Draghi and his drive to revive Italy’s coronavirus-ravaged economy with EU-funded investments.
He will on Monday present to parliament his plan…
Keep on reading: Waiting for wifi: Italy’s digital divide