Shouldn't having a "Mad Despot" also be a requirement? Both Island and Greenland are on the list, but are both democratic.<p>They probably have few internet providers because they are so small.<p>Greenland has a population of 56K. Iceland 320K and almost all live in the same city.
An other interesting question is: who is at the other end of those single cables? Those parties can switch of the Internet in a neighboring country or, (worse) eavesdrop on all unencrypted traffic or (worst) silently change data (imagine modifying the contens of cnn.com or bbc.co.uk) going into and out of that country.<p>For example, I would hope for Cuba that their connection is to Venezuela, and not to Miami.
what they need to be looking at are underwater cable landings [1] and not "greater than 40 ISPs".<p><a href="http://www.cablemap.info/" rel="nofollow">http://www.cablemap.info/</a>