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elecommunications operator PT Indosat (ISAT) rounded up the first nine months of this year with a net loss of Rp 210.6 billion (US$17.3 million), with a sharp decline on foreign exchange losses during the period.

The net loss caused the publicly listed firm to post a total net loss of Rp 1.32 trillion during the January-September period this year, compared with a total net loss of Rp 1.77 trillion incurred by the company during the same period last year.

Indosat saw a smaller loss this year largely because the company managed to reduce its foreign exchange (forex) losses to Rp 146.7 billion, a sharp decrease from Rp 2.3 trillion year-on-year (y-o-y).

In the country'€™s saturated telecommunications market, Indosat was not the only firm to suffer losses during the first nine months of this year.

The country'€™s second largest telecommunications operator, PT XL Axiata, ended its nine-month period this year with Rp 901.2 billion in net losses.

As well as its net loss, Indosat'€™s revenues fell slightly to Rp 17.7 trillion in the nine-month period ending on Sept. 30 from Rp 17.8 trillion y-o-y.

The firm'€™s revenue from both cellular and fixed telecommunication business shrank by 1.4 percent and 8.3 percent to Rp 14.3 trillion and Rp 833.9 billion, respectively.

In contrast, earnings from multimedia, data communication and Internet services rose by 8.3 percent y-o-y to Rp 2.6 trillion from Rp 2.4 trillion, driven by surging data traffic from its subscribers.

The firm recorded 54.2 million subscribers as of September this year with a total of 55,467 terabytes in data traffic. This represents a higher figure than the 53.8 million subscribers and 17,646 terabytes, respectively, over the same period last year.

The traffic of SMS, meanwhile, dropped by 13.1 percent to 179 million during the first nine months of this year from 206 million in the corresponding period last year.

Indosat, which is majority owned by Qatar-based Ooredoo, has been carrying out network modernization in a number of regions nationwide to better cater to surging demand for data usage in the future.

Indosat president director Alexander Rusli said recently that he was upbeat that his firm would record a better financial performance next year once the network modernization was completed.

'€œWe hope we will grow above the industry average next year as the network modernization will be completed,'€ he said.

Alexander added that his firm would also issue bonds worth Rp 2.2 trillion to help ease exposure from its US-dollar denominated debts, as announced last week.

Indosat has started slashing its total debts. The company'€™s total debts stood at Rp 21.6 trillion as of September this year from Rp 22.2 trillion y-o-y.

Indosat'€™s shares jumped by 0.57 percent to Rp 3,500 a piece at Tuesday'€™s close from Rp 3,480 in the previous closing.