About VOL.AT (Vorarlberg Online)

VOL.AT (Vorarlberg Online)

VOL.AT, short for Vorarlberg Online, is the regional news portal of Vorarlberg, Austria's westernmost federal state, and is regarded as Austria's first regional news portal. Launched in 1995 by the Vorarlberger Medienhaus, today Russmedia, it has developed over three decades from a pioneering internet experiment into the central digital news and service platform for its home state. The portal is operated by Russmedia Digital GmbH, based at Gutenbergstrasse 1 in Schwarzach, Vorarlberg, and its newsroom works in close connection with the Vorarlberger Nachrichten, the state's leading daily newspaper.

Launch in 1995 and the Teleport origins

VOL.AT went online in 1995, the same year in which the Vorarlberg media house founded its internet company, Teleport Consulting and Systemmanagement GmbH. With Vorarlberg Online, Teleport contributed significantly to the development and distribution of internet access in Vorarlberg itself: the company was not only publishing online content but also helping households and businesses in the state get connected. Russmedia's own history records that VOL.AT became the first regional news portal in Austria and that the local portal developed into a mass medium.

That 1995 start places VOL.AT among the earliest regional news websites in the German-speaking world. At a time when most Austrian newspapers had no web presence at all, the Vorarlberg publisher was already operating a portal with regional news and services. Two years later, in 1997, Teleport joined with cable television providers to become the first private provider of broadband internet via TV cable in Vorarlberg, underlining how closely the portal's history is tied to the state's internet infrastructure itself.

Operator, Russmedia Digital, and the Schwarzach base

The operator of VOL.AT is Russmedia Digital GmbH, seated in Schwarzach, where Russmedia built its headquarters and printing plant in 1995 beside the printing facility, in a building designed by architect Ernst Giselbrecht. Russmedia as a group combines daily and weekly newspapers, a wide range of online portals, a printing plant, logistics, radio and IT services under one roof in Schwarzach, and describes itself as an international multi-niche media company.

According to Russmedia, around 1,000 employees work at 19 European locations across the group, around 500 of them exclusively in the digital area, and nine out of ten Vorarlberg residents obtain information from Russmedia daily. Within that group, VOL.AT is the flagship digital news product for the home market, marketed together with other portals by the group's premium marketer austria.com/plus.

The online newsroom and integration with Vorarlberger Nachrichten

An online newsroom of more than ten editors works on VOL.AT in Schwarzach. In 2012 the portal's editorial operation was integrated with the Vorarlberger Nachrichten newspaper, aligning the digital portal and the print daily more closely. The Vorarlberger Nachrichten, founded in 1945 and published by Russmedia Verlag, is Vorarlberg's leading newspaper, and the shared editorial structure means VOL.AT combines dedicated online editors with the reporting resources of the newspaper.

Much of the portal's content comes from the APA, the Austria Press Agency, alongside its own productions. That mix — agency material for national and international news, own reporting for Vorarlberg — is the standard model for Austrian regional portals, and it allows a newsroom of VOL.AT's size to maintain continuous coverage far beyond its home state while concentrating its own journalists on regional stories.

Coverage and services for Vorarlberg

VOL.AT covers Vorarlberg comprehensively: the state capital Bregenz and the cities of Dornbirn, Feldkirch and Bludenz, the Rhine valley communities and the state's valleys and mountain regions. Its reporting spans state and municipal politics, business, police and courts, sport — including the state's football and ice hockey clubs — culture, and community life in a small state where regional media remain the primary source of local information.

Beyond news, VOL.AT has deliberately built a broad service layer. Russmedia describes the portal app as a kind of digital pocket knife for the region, adding data-driven live services such as detailed weather, fuel prices, public transport information, highway cameras, speed camera warnings and traffic information, with the stated ambition of being the database of the region. Industry reporting on VOL.AT has highlighted features such as integrated WhatsApp sharing of news articles, described as a first in the German-speaking market at the time, and the portal family also includes classified and topic portals for jobs, real estate and cars in Vorarlberg.

Video and Vorarlberg LIVE

Video has become a distinct part of the VOL.AT offer. The discussion format Vorarlberg LIVE is broadcast from the Russmedia TV studio and features regional topics, video content from mobile reporters and frequent live streams, including amateur football matches. Under the portal's current digital strategy the format moved from a daily to a weekly programme on VOL.AT in October, with a focus on expanding digital video formats connected to the joint subscription project.

That subscription project reflects the group's wider digital shift. Since 2021 the premium articles of Vorarlberger Nachrichten, NEUE and VOL.AT have been available in a joint subscription, and Russmedia later launched V+, described in industry reporting as the central digital subscription project across its portals. VOL.AT therefore operates a hybrid model: a large free news and service offer alongside premium content shared with its sister newspapers.

Audience and ÖWA ranking

In ÖWA's 2025 annual ranking of Austrian news and information portals, VOL.AT placed 13th with 1,354,209 unique users per month and 13,107,188 visits per month. The visits figure is especially striking: relative to Vorarlberg's population, VOL.AT generates a volume of use that Russmedia describes as making it the most visited regional portal in Europe in relation to population, and earlier industry figures already recorded more than a million unique clients per month.

The portal's reach must be read against the size of its home state. Vorarlberg is one of Austria's smallest federal states by population, yet its portal sits in the national top twenty alongside the websites of newspapers serving far larger regions. That performance underpins both its advertising value and the group's claim that 90 percent of Vorarlbergers obtain information from Russmedia on a daily basis.

Technology role within Russmedia

VOL.AT's technology has travelled beyond Vorarlberg. Through Russmedia Solutions, the group offers its publishing technology to other publishers, and Russmedia states that the Swiss NZZ group relies on VOL.AT technology and that the Citizen Forum application of the Vorarlberger Nachrichten is used by Germany's Funke Media Group. The portal that began in 1995 as a regional experiment thus became a reference product whose software and formats are licensed to major publishers in two neighbouring countries.

This technology role fits the group's self-description and its history of technical firsts in Vorarlberg, from desktop publishing and computer-to-plate production in the newspaper printing plant to cable broadband. VOL.AT is both a news product and the group's digital showcase.

Position among Austrian regional portals

Among Austria's regional portals, VOL.AT holds a special historical position as the first of its kind, launched years before most newspaper websites. It competes for national online reach with the portals of the other federal-state newspapers while dominating its own state market in combination with the Vorarlberger Nachrichten. In the 2025 ÖWA annual table it ranked immediately behind tt.com of Tyrol and ahead of the portals of the Salzburger Nachrichten and other regional titles.

Its history also shows the consolidation pattern of Austrian regional media: a family-owned regional publisher building digital scale early, integrating print and online newsrooms in 2012, adding subscription products in the 2020s, and exporting its digital know-how. Few Austrian portals can document a continuous online history from 1995 to the present.

Ownership context

VOL.AT's owner Russmedia traces its roots to Eugen Russ, who acquired the Vorarlberger Landeszeitung publishing house in 1919, and to the founding of the Vorarlberger Nachrichten in 1945. The group later acquired the competing Wann and Wo weekly and the Neue Vorarlberger Tageszeitung, launched Antenne Vorarlberg as the state's first statewide private radio station in 1998, and expanded internationally into online marketplaces. In 2026 the Austrian Federal Competition Authority cleared a notified Russmedia acquisition of control over Moser Holding, the Tyrol-based publisher, subject to remedies — a development that underlines the continuing consolidation around VOL.AT's parent group, though the portal's own Vorarlberg operation remains its historic core.

Assessment and outlook

Thirty years after its launch, VOL.AT remains the defining digital news brand of Vorarlberg: Austria's first regional portal, operated from Schwarzach by Russmedia Digital, editorially integrated with the Vorarlberger Nachrichten since 2012, supplied substantially by APA alongside its own newsroom of more than ten online editors, and reaching 1,354,209 unique users a month in ÖWA's 2025 annual average. Its combination of news, regional data services, video and subscription premium content, together with the licensing of its technology to other European publishers, makes it one of the most fully developed regional portal models in the German-speaking media market.