Telstra, Optus, and TPG Telecom dominate the market, with an 80% share between them.

For a major hub of Internet traffic, Australia is still surprisingly constrained when it comes to cable connectivity. Its primary connectivity to the US is via the Southern Cross System. Telstra's Endeavour cable links it to Hawaii, where onwards transit to the US is connected. SEA-ME-WE-3 is Australia's only connectivity with SouthEast Asia, linking Perth to Singapore. The Australia-Japan cable links Guam and Japan, but is a constrained capacity consortium cable. TPG's PPC-1 cable links Australia to Guam, 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 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 new Japan-Guam-Australia cable, which would presumably interconnect with SEA-US in Guam.