The Southern Cross NEXT is a 15,857 km submarine cable system connecting Sydney, Auckland and Los Angeles, with branching units linking the Pacific Islands of Fiji, Tokelau, and Kiribati.

The Southern Cross NEXT will be a high capacity express route, providing data-centre connectivity between Sydney, Auckland, and Los Angeles, to be the lowest latency path from Australia and New Zealand to the United States, with a design capacity of 72 Tbps and four fiber pairs over its trunk between Sydney and Los Angeles. The Southern Cross NEXT is an extension of the existing Southern Cross eco-system.

The Southern Cross NEXT is expected to cost around US$350 million, invested by Southern Cross Cable Limited (a Bermuda private limited company), with its sister company Pacific Carriage Limited Inc (PCLI, a Delaware corporation) as landing party in the US, and its subsidiaries in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and the Pacific Island as landing party in corresponding countries. 

Southern Cross Cable Limited was owned by Spark NZ (50%), Singtel-Optus (40%) and Verizon Business (10%). In December 2018, Telstra acquired a 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%). There is similar ownership for Pacific Carriage Limited Inc, with Singtel's Optus Networks Pty Ltd replacing Singtel EInvestments.

The supply contract was awarded to ASN and was granted CIF (Contract In Force) in October 2019.

The Southern Cross NEXT project is well positioned to meet its target completion date of January 2022.