Telecom Cook Islands will spend hundreds of thousands of NZ dollars upgrading its mobile phone network to overcome congestion caused by increasing use, the Cook Islands Times reported Monday.

Chief executive Stuart Davies said the company had already committed to investing in a new exchange, or switch, before network outages over the past week.

Technical details were already being developed for the exchange, which would also enable further development of services to outer islands.

Davies said they had been told their existing network, worth nearly 4 million NZ dollars (2.8 million U.S. dollars), was the best in the Pacific Islands. But it was running out of capacity because of rapid growth in mobile phone use.

Many people on the main island, Rarotonga, now have their own mobile phones. Text messaging (SMS) using these is also increasingly popular, especially amongst younger Cook Islanders.

Telecom Cook Islands is the country's only telecommunications service provider. It is jointly owned by the Cook Islands Government and Telecom New Zealand.

The 15 volcanic islands and coral atolls of the Cook Islands are scattered over 770,000 square miles of the South Pacific, between American Samoa to the west and French Polynesia to the east.

A former British protectorate, the territory is a self- governing state in free association with New Zealand.

Source: Xinhua