Today we’ve decided to explore internet and e-commerce infrastructure of Vatican. Everyone knows Vatican as a landlocked sovereign city-state, populated by only 826 people. The territory of the city-state consists of a landlocked enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. Vatican City represents an extremely ecclesiastical or sacerdotal-monarchical state, ruled by the Bishop of Rome—the Pope. The highest state functionaries are all Catholic clergymen of various national origins. It is the sovereign territory of the Holy See and the location of the Pope's residence, referred to as the Apostolic Palace.

Interestingly, the economy of this monarchical state is uniquely, non-commercial, supported financially by the sale of postage stamps and tourist mementos, fees for admission to museums, and the sale of publications. Besides, the country’s industries include printing, the production of mosaics and the manufacture of staff uniforms.

Turning to the telecom sector of the smallest in the world state, we are to note the City is served by an independent, modern telephone system, the Vatican Pharmacy, and also possesses its independent broadband network that delivers Internet connection across the country.

The Vatican also controls its own Internet ccTLD, which is registered as .va and administered by the Internet Office of the Holy See, the Episcopal jurisdiction of the Catholic Church in Rome. There are very strict limitations for the registration under the .va domain. Thus, only official sites of the Vatican can be registered in the zone of the Vatican domain. Most of them are at the second-level names, as well as within vatican.va. Importantly, second-level domains are not available to the public.

There are about 30 easily found names the .va zone, listed below. Actually, there are many more subdomains for e-mail only.

• Vatican Main Website is pointed to by these names: www.va, www.vatican.va, www.pcf.va, www.test23111973.va, benedettoxvi.va, benedictumxvi.va, mv.vatican.va, search.vatican.va, seraphin.vatican.va
• Vatican State Government: www.vaticanstate.va
• Landing page for the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano: www.osservatoreromano.va
• Login page for staff: www.cdp.osservatoreromano.va, www.cdp.ossrom.va
• Vatican Museums: www.museivaticani.va, www.cappellasistina.va, www.chapellesixtine.va, www.capillasixtina.va, www.sistinechapel.va, www.sixtinischekapelle.va, sistinechapel.va
• Apostolic Penitentiary: www.paenitentiaria.va, www.penitenzieria.va
• Pontifical Mission Societies: www.ppoomm.va
• Photo Ordering Site: www.photo.va
• Vatican Archives: asv.vatican.va
• Vatican Library: bav.vatican.va
• Mailing Lists (Mailman): mlists.vatican.va

Strangely enough, some offsite secondary DNS servers used by the Vatican are named after Egyptian gods, like: seth.namex.it, osiris.namex.it.

As for the broadband penetration level, it’s relatively low, that might possibly be explained by great role of the Church in people’s life. Thus, the volume of Internet subscribers in such a miniature state has only hovered 11%, with only 93 people connected.
Besides, citizens and tourists can apply to the web in the Internet Cafes, located within a 20 mile radius of the city, some of which offer more than just Internet service. Many of these Internet cafes offer food, calling cards and beer to their patrons. These Cafes are:

• The Internet Cafe S.L.R
• The Beehive Café
• The Easy Internet Café
• Cremma E Cioccolato Internet Café
• Internet Café (located on Via Degli Albieti Number 22 d.)

Being a very religious catholic state, Vatican’s characterized by specific attitude to the modern life, including Internet. Thus Church’s attitude regarding to the Internet is thoroughly exposed on the Vatican’s official web site www.vatican.va in the work “The Church and Internet”.

“The Church's interest in the Internet is a particular expression of her longstanding interest in the media of social communication. Seeing the media as an outcome of the historical scientific process by which humankind “advances further and further in the discovery of the resources and values contained in the whole of creation”, the Church often has declared her conviction that they are, in the words of the Second Vatican Council, “marvelous technical inventions” that already do much to meet human needs and may yet do even more”.

Well, Church has thus taken a fundamentally positive approach to the media, including Internet, recognizing the modern media of social communication to be cultural factors that play a role in this story. Thus, the companion document, Ethics in Internet, where the Internet's implications for religion and especially for the Catholic Church are considered, has recently been released.

Modern life, even in such a catholic and monarchical state, applies in a special way to the Internet, which is helping bring about revolutionary changes in commerce, education, politics, journalism, the relationship of nation to nation and culture to culture—changes not just in how people communicate but in how they understand their lives.

Obviously, in such a monarchical miniature state, with uniquely non-commercial economy, e-commerce sector haven’t got any chances to be developed somehow.

Nevertheless, Church’s positive attitude to Internet and recognizing it as an important part of the modern life is a good sign for further deployment of Internet and e-commerce infrastructure within the country.