— By Maurizio Goretti, Namex CEO
Summer is an opportunity to look around and reflect on the past year. For those who work at Namex, it’s the right time to consider how the infrastructure we help build every day is, first and foremost, a story of people, relationships and communities.
It all began thirty years ago, in 1995, with the birth of NapRoma, a Network Access Point launched within CASPUR, a university consortium in Rome. Only four interconnected ISPs, and no one could have imagined that this embryonic core would eventually become the main internet exchange point of central and southern Italy.
Today, Namex is a neutral, independent, a non-profit organization that brings together 195 ISPs from the consortium and 267 interconnected networks, including content providers, international operators, institutions, research organizations and national and local providers. It’s a technical community, but also a human one, that has made collaboration its method and connection its value.
Our annual event, NAM 2025, brought over 700 people from 270 companies to Rome’s Gazometro, demonstrating a vibrant, engaged, and conscious community. The same spirit drives informal gatherings like the monthly beers in Rome (RMNOG) and the bimonthly ones in Bari (BariNOG): moments when technology meets mutual trust, and from which ideas, projects, and shared solutions often emerge.
Namex was born in Rome, but increasingly looks toward the Mediterranean. It’s not just a geographical matter, although the BlueMed and Unitirreno cables will bring us ever closer to the beating heart of intercontinental traffic, but cultural. The Mediterranean represents for us a horizon of exchange, an invitation to dialogue, a natural space to enhance what we are: a network of networks, but above all a network of people. This is demonstrated by projects like ANIX in Albania, technical training activities for regional operators, and the unwavering belief that digital sovereignty also depends on local infrastructural autonomy.
With Namex Observatory, with our points of presence in Rome’s main data centers, with the new routes opening up, we want to continue being what we have always been: a facilitator, a place of trust, a meeting point.
Wishing everyone a wonderful summer. May it be a time of rest, but also of vision. Because building the Internet, today more than ever, means building communities.
