We are to consider today Internet and e-commerce industry of the world's largest island with over 56,000 people populated it, Greenland that has its capital in Nuuk. The island represents an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Despite, geographically and ethnically Greenland associated with the continent of North America, politically and historically this Arctic island nation has close ties with Europe.

The economy of Greenland is for today critically dependent on fishing and fish exports. The public sector, including publicly owned enterprises and the municipalities, plays a dominant role in Greenland's economy. About half of the government revenues come from grants from the Danish government, an important supplement to the GDP. But GDP per capita is equivalent to that of the weaker economies of Europe.

In terms of communication, Greenland is a high-tech society. Country’s ICT infrastructure is on the high stage of progress, though with only one telecommunication company operating, TELE Greenland.

The company is fully owned by the Greenlandic Home Rule government. The monopolist represents the single Internet Service Provider, that also provides switched telephone and data, land mobile communications, VHF and MF shore-to-ship communication, and television and radio broadcasting.

Actually, the TELE Greenland A/S Group, created in 1997, by the merging of TELE Greenland and Kalaallit Allakkeriviat (Greenland Postal Service), is the main telecommunication and postal provider in Greenland, divided into three business units:

• TELE runs telecommunications activities
• POST runs the Greenland postal service pursuant to parliamentary regulations on postal services
• Coastal Radio Service, that handles maritime safety and emergency communications, along with commercial communications for shipping.

It’s important to note, such type of monopoly is not uncommon in Greenland.

The island nation is connected to the other world with the help of submarine communications cable system, Greenland Connect, operated by TELE Greenland. The submarine cable, that was put in operation from March, 2009, connects Canada, Greenland, and Iceland. It contains two fibre pairs specified for 128*10 Gbit/s wavelength each. Initial lit capacity is 1*10 Gbit/s for each fibre pair. Two additional 10 Gbit/s Wavelength were scheduled for installation in the summer of 2010. The cable has cable landing points at:

• Milton, Trinity Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
• Nuuk, Greenland
• Qaqortoq, Greenland
• Landeyjarsandur, South Iceland

The cable is colocated with the "DANICE" cable in Iceland and the "Persona/Trans Gulf" cable in Newfoundland. Together these cables interconnects the networks of major carriers in Europe and North America.

Thus far, the majority of Greenlanders has already been connected to the Web, with over 90% current subscribers. The growth seen for the decade is impressive as it used to be slightly over 31% Internet users across the country in 2000, according to www.internetworldstats.com.

Thus far, Greenland has quit modern facilities today, having become not totally shut out from the rest of the world with the launch of the Greenland Connect in 2009. Meantime, despite many Greenlanders own PCs, there are Internet cafés in a number of the bigger towns, including capital, Nuuk, and at several tourist offices.

Country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Greenland is .gl, administered by TELE Greenland. The domain is available for Internet services world-wide and registrations are handled by ICANN accredited domain name registrars. The .gl domain name is sometimes used as a symbol standing for "good luck", "graphics library" or Galicia and Galician language.

As for e-commerce deployment, the most important impulse for its development appeared to be the launch of the submarine communications cable system that enables the island to communicate with the other countries of the world.

One of the good examples of successful e-commerce businesses in the country is Greenland IT a global technology offshore outsourcing company. The company has a development center in Bangladesh. Greenland IT represents a leading edge technology and IT-consulting firm that has a strong focus on delivering the best, cost-effective services and solutions to meet all client needs i.e. financial, healthcare, e-commerce and media sectors. The company also offers software development, offshore website development and outsourced maintenance services to companies around the world.

Well, despite Greenland represents a separate from the rest of the world island, high-tech progress let it keep up with the modern society. And of course, one of the important development, that impacted ICT and e-commerce progress in the country, was the launch of the submarine communications cable system.