A company planning to lay state-of-the-art fiber-optic cable from the mainland to St. Croix told Coastal Zone Management officials of the plan’s St. Thomas portion Thursday.
Representatives of Trans Americas Fiber said the 1,346-mile cable would stretch from Vero Beach, Florida, to Butler Bay, St. Croix, in 2026. If CZM approves, Trans Americas Fiber plans to have the 14.5-mile St. Thomas leg in place in 2025, providing a dramatic upgrade in internet bandwidth and connectivity, company officials said.
The two- or three-inch diameter cable would run along the ocean’s floor north of Inner and Outer Brass islands before turning into Magens Bay. Divers would ensure the line didn’t interfere with undersea life in the area, which included some coral listed as threatened, said Benjamin Keularts, an environmental engineer with Tysam Tech, a company that consulted on the project.
Seagrass in the area was an invasive species but still an important fish habitat to be avoided, he said.
The route is shared by as many as 17 other undersea cables, Keularts said. Roughly a dozen cables emerge in Peterborg where the Trans Americas Fiber line will come up and connect to AT&T’s facility at the top of the hill, he said.
A 2022 review of the site and existing cables in the area revealed they were not moving with the current and were free of abrasions or other damage, Keularts said. The double-armored lines would be guided into place with buoys then sunk with the aid of divers.
“The idea is for these cables to last for decades,” he said. “A cable can be placed and routed to the existing easement.”
The cable would be winched up a new manhole about 3,000 feet northwest of Magens Bay Beach. The area is already a no-anchoring zone but CZM officials suggested updating nautical maps would be a necessary step.
Trans Americas Fiber would own the line, with its services leased to AT&T and potentially other telecommunications providers, he said. Other branches of the line bound for St. Croix would stretch to Tortola, Puerto Rico, Panama and two locations in Colombia.
Dennis Peters, vice president at Gulf South Research Corporation, told the CZM the cable would help drastically improve the territory’s internet service, help better link people around the planet, and increase telecommunications stability and security.
“There is such a global need for expanded internet,” Peters said. “What we see is the greater need.”
Stacey Plaskett, the territory’s delegate to Congress, has said a fiber-optic cable linking the U.S. mainland and the continent of Africa via the Virgin Islands would be an economic boon and help fight trans-Atlantic crime.
Plaskett introduced legislation in 2023 that would authorize an undersea fiber-optic cable connecting New York, Virginia, and St. Croix with Lagos, Nigeria, and Ghana. The DiasporaLink Act, she said, would establish high-speed internet connection to Africa and throughout the Caribbean from the U.S. mainland. No such direct link currently exists, with most cables running from New York to Europe before routing to Africa. The closest direct link is with Brazil.
Roughly 400 undersea cables carry 98 percent of the world’s internet data and an increasing share of telephone communications, Plaskett said.
Virgin Islands Next Generation Network (viNGN), the company that provides internet access to providers like Liberty VI and Viya, also praised DiasporaLink, saying internet stability and resilience were much needed.
The CZM meeting also featured a plan to upgrade the wastewater treatment plant at Cowpet Bay West, which would increase the properties’ wastewater treatment plant. The project will also include complete structural repairs of ocean facing balconies on all units.
