Jakarta. Indonesia's three-biggest network carriers have increased the capacity of their network infrastructure ahead of the Christmas holiday season, anticipating a surge in data traffic towards the end of the year.

Telkomsel, a joint venture between state-owned Telekomunikasi Indonesia and Singapore's SingTel, projected data traffic to rise by 22.5 percent between Christmas and New Year, compared to the daily average traffic in 2015. Voice and text messaging services are expected to rise by 6.4 percent and 18.8 percent respectively.

"There's a lot of increased communication by subscribers as we approach the end of the year, especially in data services," Ririek Adriansyah, president director of Telkomsel, said in a statement on Wednesday.

The state network carrier, the country's largest with some 149 million subscribers as of September, has so far increased the capacity for data services by 60 percent compared to 2014, the statement said.

Similar projections have been made among Telkomsel competitors, XL Axiata and Indosat Ooredoo, who foresee data usages increasing faster than voice and text messaging service — a trend network carriers have spotted as well and capitalized upon in recent years.

Heri Purnomo, group head chief technology officer at Indosat Ooredo, a local unit of Qatar-based Ooredoo, said the company has also strengthened its data services capacity by 3,463 terabyte per day.

It has also expanded the capacity of voice services and text messaging services by 2,430 million minute daily and 1,285 billion text messages per day.

"We've prepared the network capacity to anticipate the possibility of a traffic increase, whether it's voice, text or data services, in line with our transformation plan to give the best experience for customers," he said in a statement on Wednesday.

XL Axiata, part of Malaysia's Axiata group, has optimized as well as increased the number of base transceiver units (BTS) among typically crowded areas during the holiday season, such as the National Monument at the heart of Jakarta as well as the Puncak area in West Java, a popular getaway destination.

"As people are adapting to data services, including for making calls and sending messages, we predict data traffic will increase much more significantly than voice and text message," said Yessie D. Yosetya, chief service management at XL Axiata, who projected data services to rise between 15 percent and 20 percent during the year-end holiday season this year from the daily average.

In comparison, voice services are expected to grow by 5 percent and text messages at 10 percent across its 41.5 million subscribers, according to a statement from XL Axiata released on Wednesday.

Additional reporting by Lona Olavia