LET'S GOWEX : Madrid City Mayor, Ana Botella, visits GOWEX headquarters

Madrid's City mayor was accompanied by Dolores Flores, General Coordinator of Economic and Employments, Lorenzo Amor, president at the National Federation of Self-Employement and Pedro González, Trade and Business development Director at Madrid Emprende. During the visit she highlighted the important work of Jenaro Garcia, founder and CEO of GOWEX, as an example of an entrepreneur who has succeeded in turning a company born in Madrid  into a world reference for the free WiFi services

Madrid, July the 1st 2014-. The Mayor of Madrid, Ana Botella, visited this morning the headquarters of GOWEX (GOW-MAB, NYSE Alternext ALGOW, LGWXY-ADR Program) the Madrilenian leading company in creating Wireless Smart Cities® all over the world. During the visit, the Mayor was accompanied by Dolores Flores, General Coordinator of Economic and Employments, Lorenzo Amor, president at the National Federation of Self-Employement and Pedro González, Trade and Business development Director at Madrid Emprende.

During the visit, the Madrid Mayor highlighted the important work of its founder and CEO Jenaro Garcia, as an example of entrepreneur and businessman who has managed to turn a company that took its first steps in Madrid, into a world reference for the free WiFi.

The president of the National Federation of Self-Employement, ATA, Lorenzo Amor highlighted how "Madrid is an example of the importance involving the cities' development and transformation, the entrepreneurship in a smart city, which is not only where new technologies play the main role, but also able to detect and support talent. The city of Madrid and GOWEX are a clear example of the mutual benefit provided by the institutional support for entrepreneurship and self-employment in cities ".

"It is a great honor that the City Council of Madrid emphasize the values ​​and business career of GOWEX, since it is in this city where we launched five years ago one of our first projects in collaboration with AVPPM, (Newsstands Association of Madrid), WiFi Kiosks, which, thanks to its innovative value, has been largely responsible for our further success. Besides, thanks to the support of the Madrid Council, together we have managed to turn Madrid into a great WiFi Smart City, "says Jenaro García GOWEX CEO.

Jenaro García, Madrilenian successful entrepreneur

With a degree in Law and a Masters in Business Administration obtained at the Complutense University of Madrid, Jenaro García (Madrid, 1968), married with two children, is a natural born entrepreneur. When he was only 19 years, he started up a company, with a group of friends, for the import of beetle-cars from Germany. Thanks to his recognized talent for business, Garcia worked in the 90s for investment banks such as Prudential, Merrill Lynch or Smith Barney in the U.S.

The experience and knowledge gained during this phase served to found, together with three more partners, the company Intelideas, the first companies-oriented ISP in Spain and in 1998 created Iber X, the first stock market for bandwidth telecommunication business in our country. Six years later, Jenaro understood that the WiFi would become a service as basic and necessary as water, available to everyone for free. Coinciding with the launch of the first iPhone in 2007, he reaffirmed his commitment to the mobile world and oriented the focus of the company towards the  creation of WiFi Smart Cities through GOWEX Wireless.

Encouraged by his unlimited entrepreneurial spirit, the company he runs connects today millions of citizens and visitors to the Free WiFi in over 85 cities around the world (New York, San Francisco, Miami, Paris, Dublin , Madrid etc.) and aspires to become the WiFi generalized standard model.

Madrid, the Wireless Smart City paradigm

The capital counts with GOWEX WiFi Free for its millions of citizens and tourists in the main squares and the city's public spaces based on the public-private agreement signed with the Madrid's City Council announced last May the public spaces. The Company also provides free WiFi coverage in the entire fleet of urban buses (EMT), intercity and tourism buses, and the city's newstands and cafes. During July, GOWEX will open the free connection service at the metro station Nuevos Ministerios, which will be gradually expanded to major stations.

In addition to a great offer of free connectivity, the Madrid Wireless Smart City project launched by the city of Madrid and GOWEX enables the integration of intelligent services within the network and the participation of various actors part of the city: from the small business around the corner, to transportation means or stores chains. And all that thanks to the deployment of a network of sensors throughout the capital and the exploitation of the WiFi network as wireless connection infrastructure, which allows significant cost savings and an efficient management of such network.

In this sense, Madrid represents a paradigmatic case of Wireless Smart City and is one of the best connected cities in the world with a free WiFi area covering more than 40% of the capital, comparable to big cities like New York.