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For a major hub of Internet traffic, Australia was surprisingly constrained when it came to cable connectivity until 2018. Its primary connectivity to the mainland US is via had been the Southern Cross System since 2001. Telstra's Endeavour cable links linked it to Hawaii in 2008, where onwards transit to the US is connected. SEA-ME-WE-3 was Australia's only connectivity with SouthEast Asia until 2018, when two new the Vocus Perth to Singapore cables were cable was commissioned. That route was duplicated again in June 2019 by the SubPartners Indigo cable. The Australia-Japan cable links Cable (AJC) linked Guam and Japan in 2001, but is it's a constrained capacity consortium cable. TPG's PPC-1 cable links linked Australia to Guam in 2009, but its users all purchase onwards capacity on other cables without breaking out, either to the US or to Asia. New Caledonia's Gondwana Cable, Papua New Guinea's A-PNG cable (a re-commissioned PacRIM West), and New Zealand's Tasman Global Alliance (TGA) are the only Pacific cable directly terminating in Australia.
New cables are announced to connect Australia to the world on a regular basis, but it's been seven years since a project was successfully completed. In 2016 both Hawaiki and Southern Cross announced new links from Sydney to the US. The INDIGO Cable (formerly known as APX West) was also re-launched to provide a replacement for SEA-ME-WE-3 from Perth to Singapore. NextGen Australia announced a new cable from Darwin to Port Headland that could branch to Timor Leste. Both the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea have announced projects to build new cable to Sydney, though these projects could well combine to save on costs. Finally, the Ram Telecoms International has begun work on a and until a flurry of activity in 2018, most new projects seemed unlikely to ever complete. The completion of Hawaiki, ASC, and Indigo have changed Australia's fortunes significantly. Two likely new projects include the Coral Sea Cable System & RTI's new Japan-Guam-Australia (JGA) cable, which would will presumably interconnect with SEA-US in Guam.