With the cellular business facing tremendous challenges given the already high market penetration and a maturing market, Smart Communications plans to continue rolling out and deploying new and innovative services for its large and growing subscriber base to further grow the market.

As of December 2009, Smart recorded a subscriber base of 41.3 million and posted a revenue of P95.8 billion from its wireless services business.

To enable Smart with a faster time-to-market for its services, the country’s largest mobile communications service provider has recently acquired a new unified charging and billing solution from Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) that will offer the telco a better understanding of its subscribers usage behavior and preferences.

The value of the transaction was not disclosed.

Orlando B. Vea, chief wireless adviser at Smart Communications, said over the last years the company has deployed a large number of services in the market that resulted in increased complexity in its charging and billing platform. “These complexity poses a challenge to the rapid development and roll-out of new services for our subscribers.”

For instance, among these many services that Smart introduced recently include Smartalk, an unlimited voice service offering available to Smart Buddy and Smart Gold subscribers nationwide and its variant - Smartalk Plus, which offers unlimited calling and on-net texting during off-peak hours and reduced rates during peak hours.