The Man Who Would Be King.(Renato Soru )

Sanluri, a peaceful farming town on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, has named no roads after its most famous son. But the presence of dot-com billionaire Renato Soru is everywhere. Walking past the old men on a bench in front of town hall, childhood friend Tino Lobina drops into Our Lady of Grace, where he and Soru were too tone- deaf to make it into the choir. The pastor now helps Soru distribute money, anonymously, to families in need. Farther along the cobblestone alley, near the site of the funeral parlor their fathers ran, stands a stone sculpture donated by Soru. Just beyond lies Soru's ochre-colored childhood home, where he still takes refuge on weekends from the hectic life of an Internet mogul. Like many locals, Lobina, now the deputy mayor, profited handsomely when Soru took his company, Tiscali, public 15 months ago. But Soru himself became, for a time, the richest man in Italy. "It's like a movie," says Lobina, shaking his head.

In the plot so far, an unknown businessman has burst out of his base on the backward island of Sardinia to make a serious run at ruling the Internet in Europe. Leveraging his winnings in the biggest IPO in Italian history, the son of a grocer has spent more than $5 billion in the past 12 months to seize beachheads in 15 European countries, from Spain to The Netherlands. Prime Minister Giuliano Amato has anointed Soru "the Bill Gates of Italy," which may understate his impact. The Sardinian upstart has stirred a new sense of social mobility in a nation dominated for decades by a circle of wealthy families--and a new sense of Italy's place in Europe's pecking order. Soru's acquisitions in just the past two months have vaulted Tiscali past famous Spanish, French and American rivals into second place among Internet-service providers in Europe, with 5 million subscribers. With Soru's sights now set on new targets, Tiscali is aiming to become No. 1 by the end of the year, ahead of both Germany's T-Online and America Online. The Forbes 2,000 list of the world's richest people endorsed the Italian view of Soru when it called him "a mix of [AOL CEO] Steve Case and Julius Caesar." "I started with no money, here on Sardinia, closer to Africa than Milan," Soru told NEWSWEEK, strolling among the cactus outside his pink Sardinian headquarters. "But I could build a company to succeed in Italy. And now we're the potential winner in Europe."

Soru is a throwback, and an odd duck compared with slick Internet rivals. A mesmerizing public speaker, he comes off as shy in person, elbows on knees and eyes averted. He took his company name from a local archeological dig near Cagliari--a cave Sardinians once used as a fortification against invaders. His maverick vision of an Internet empire based in Sardinia includes no billionaire's toys for himself: no yacht, no mansion. Soru is the only serious Internet competitor in Europe who is not backed by a giant phone or cable company. Instead of finding a big ally for protection, Soru is attacking the giants head-on by building a pan-European fiber-optic network of his own.

Soru is also betting heavily on two big ideas--the free Internet and one Europe--that are decidely out of fashion. He rejects the idea that to survive after the dot-crash, companies must charge for access to the Net, and attract advertisers by dominating national markets. Alone among the big players, Soru is still trying to expand rapidly by offering free access to the Internet, on the bet that the Net's "unifying effect" will help forge Europe into "a single country." "It's a great coincidence: the time of the Internet is here at the time of Europe," says Soru. "We all want the same information, movies, fashion and sports."

Soru arrived at his European vision only recently and almost by accident. His mother ran a grocery store. His father, a high-school administrator, dabbled in business. The fourth of five children, Soru planned to be an economics professor when he went to Milan's Bocconi University. Massimo Cristofori, now Tiscali's chief financial officer, lived down the hall and recalls Soru dreaming small dreams, like opening a fish hatchery. Friends say Soru turned serious at 20, when his father died. Newly married to his high-school sweetheart, he began commuting from Milan back to Sanluri to help his mom expand her grocery.

Soru discovered computers in Milan, and brought the first supermarket scanner to Sanluri, where he used it in his small-but-growing chain of grocery stores. Named GS, for his mother's initials, the stores gave Soru a grip on basics. Once, after underestimating the cost of supplies, Soru fell into debt and had to carry each day's proceeds straight to the bank, where clerks eyed him with scorn. This hard lesson on cash flow explains why Soru now targets companies with cash reserves that can help finance further acquisitions. Unlike the dot-com flameouts that took perverse pride in high cash "burn rates," Soru "likes to turn off the tap and see if you are good enough to do it without a lot of money," says Paolo Susnik, chief technology officer of Tiscali.

After graduating from Bocconi in 1980, Soru went into the conservative world of Milan finance. At an Italian merchant bank he came upon the Bloomberg machine, invented by an American entrepreneur who revolutionized the way financial information is sold on Wall Street. "It's the first time I saw that a start-up really could compete with older companies," says Soru.