The Southern Cross Cable Network (SCCN) forms a protected ring network among 9 cable landing stations (two each in Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and the US mainland, and one in Fiji) and an access point in San Jose, California. The Southern Cross Cable Network contains 3 fiber pairs between Sydney and Hawaii, and 4 fiber pairs between Hawaii and the US West Coast, with almost 30,500 km in length, including 28,900km of submarine cable and 1,600km of terrestrial cable.

The Ready for Service (RFS) for Phase A of the Southern Cross network - comprising all nine stations and all segments except Segment D (from Hawaii to California) - was achieved on 15 November 2000. Completion of the fully protected loop network (RFS Phase B) was achieved on 28 February 2001.

The Southern Cross Cable Network is invested, owned and operated by Southern Cross Cables Limited (SCCL,a Bermuda private limited company) which was owned indrectly by Spark NZ (50%), Singtel EInvestments (40%) and Verizon Business (10%). In 2018, Telstra acquired 25% stake in SCCN and substantial capacity on both the existing network and the new Southern Cross NEXT subsea cable. As a result, SCCL is owned by Spark NZ (38.12%), Singtel EInvestments (30.49%), Telstra (25%) and Verizon Business (6.4%).

The Southern Cross Cable Network was originally designed to working with 10 Gbps DWDM and deliver 120Gbps of fully protected capacity (240Gbps across the network). 

On July 30, 2013, Southern Cross announced the completion of upgrade with Ciena's 100G technology, increasing its lit capacity to 2.6Tbps and system capacity to 12Tbps.

The latest upgrades (Phase J) will increase total lit network capacity to approximately 12.8Tbps over the next few years. Following the introduction of the latest 100Gbps technology the current system potential is estimated at more than 22Tbps.