For the second time in as many years, the Virgin Islands Delegate to Congress was cheering the U.S. House of Representatives’ passage of a bill that could link the U.S. mainland and West Africa via fiber-optic cable running through St. Croix.

HR 1737, known as the DiasporaLink Act, requires the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to submit a report to Congress that assesses the feasibility, value, cost, and security implications of a submarine fiber optic cable to connect the contiguous United States, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Ghana, and Nigeria.

Plaskett, a co-sponsor of the bipartisan bill, has heralded the DiasporaLink as important for national security, international cooperation, and economic stimulation. The high-speed internet connection from Africa, throughout the Caribbean, to the United States would be the first of its kind.

“The DiasporaLink Act is envisioned as both a national security instrument and a digital commerce expressway to boost America’s global, political, economic, and military advantages and influences,” she said Monday of the legislation cosponsored by Idaho Republican Russ Fulcher.

Plaskett’s nearly identical bill, introduced in 2023, was unanimously passed by the House in 2024 but was not voted on in the Senate. Plaskett said she was hopeful this time it would reach the president’s desk for his signature.

Plaskett has also trumpeted the plan’s local importance.

In 2024, Virgin Islands Next Generation Network President Stephan Adams told the Virgin Islands Legislature the DiasporaLink plan would dramatically increase the territory’s digital global relevance and pave the way for cheaper, more reliable internet service.

The plan would introduce exactly the kind of infrastructure the territory needs: expensive high-tech hardware and an additional power plant, Adams said. All this would harden the Virgin Islands’ internet resiliency.

Adams wrote in March that the power needs for DiasporaLink in the territory would require a new, much-needed power plant.

“The USVI would benefit from an independent power plant being built that has greater power generation capacity and reliability than WAPA to support data centers. The newly constructed data centers in the USVI, to house global digital commerce, would consume up to 10 times the energy capability of what WAPA could produce. WAPA does not currently have the power output capacity, reliability or cost structure to support both USVI power needs and data centers’ intense power demands,” he wrote.

Roughly 400 undersea cables carry 98 percent of the world’s internet data and an increasing share of telephone communications, Plaskett said.

“Having the hub in the U.S. Virgin Islands is a significant 21st-century paradigm shift,” she said in 2023.

Christiansted is already a major through-point for internet traffic. Five undersea cables directly connect St. Croix with New York, much of the eastern Caribbean, and both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America, according to TeleGeography’s Submarine Cable Map.

A cable linking St. Thomas and St. Croix was established in 1997.