MCLink began with a few techies who worked at Technimedia which published one of Italy's first comuputer magazines. Only universities and government agences had access to the World Wide Web until December 1, 1994. Other companies were being formed, but until Tiscali offered free dialup access to Internet you had to pay.
Telecom is no longer a monopoly, and ADSL lines are now being offered.
Many of these providers are also portals , but are listed separately. Infinito Infinito was brought to Italy by British Telecom. It offers access to Internet, an unlimited number of mail addresses, as well as 100 megabytes of web space. All for free. They also created on of the first search engines, Arianna Jumpy Jumpy is the creation of Silvio Berlusconi's Mediaset, presented in late 1999, a latecomer to the Italian web portal list.