www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Indonesia’s second-largest telecommunications provider, Indosat has planned to spend $360 million for network expansion out of the capital expenditure of US$600 million. This move is targeted to boost its service quality amid the cutthroat competition within the industry.

“We will use the $360 million budget to improve our bandwidth and networks as a whole,” President Director Johny Swandi Sjam, reportedly said. “We have to prevent our existing users from switching to the com-petition,” he added. The country has 11 mobile phone providers operating both GSM and CDMA technologies. There is a stiff competition in the mobile market where the operators are reducing call rates to woo subscribers, both new and existing users of rival firms. The cut throat competition has helped the operator to slash its net profit in 2008 by 8 percent, dragging it down to Rp 1.8 trillion ($151.2 million) from Rp 2.04 trillion a year ago. Indosat’s subscriber base totals to 36.5 million by 2008-end, bags second position  after PT Telkomsel which has more than 60 million subscribers.