A year of ‘living more’

MANILA, Philippines - To subscribers of Smart Communications Inc., 2012 was a year that saw them “living more.”

With network coverage and reliability as key components for subscribers to remain loyal and satisfied with service providers, Smart started 2012 by communicating that a superior network already exists — and that there is a far better option for mobile customers.

The telco urged everyone to “Live More” — and did this by introducing an extensive choice of devices coupled with innovative product and service offerings that will enable mobile subscribers to live their lives the way they want to.

A supercharged network

 At the core of Smart’s Live More message is a fully upgraded and optimized network, with the “nationwidest” coverage using next-generation, future-proof facilities.

This “supercharged” network provides Smart with the capacity to handle increasingly large volumes of voice, text messaging, and mobile broadband services, and allows the telco to offer a wide range of service offers designed to change the way Filipinos live and communicate.

In 2012, Smart launched the country’s first commercial Long Term Evolution (LTE) service in the country, and became one of the first few operators to do so in Asia.

Smart LTE is also the world’s first multi-band service. At the heels of its service launch, Smart unveiled its LTE Plugit and LTE Pocket Wi-Fi devices. LTE was subsequently offered to Smart mobile postpaid plan subscribers, making LTE available on handsets for the first time in the country.

Outpacing the industry

 Within the same period, Smart launched the easiest, lightest and most hassle-free postpaid plan ever created — the Smart Postpaid Freedom Plan. Smart Freedom plans enable subscribers to pay only for what they use or consume, sans the fixed monthly fees, lock-in periods, and obligations.

At the other end of the price spectrum, Smart introduced its Infinity Plan 3500, a fresh iteration of its premium brand. Plan 3500 — dubbed the entry-level Infinity plan — treated its users to the same top-notch perks available to all other Infinity plan holders.

These plans, as well as the telco’s consecutive launches of the year’s most hotly anticipated handsets such as the Samsung Galaxy series, the Nokia Lumia series, LTE smartphones, and the iPhone 5, allowed Smart to fortify its postpaid business in 2012.

The offers allowed Smart to post a 38 percent year-on-year increase in subscriber base — driven mainly by the deluge of first-time postpaid subscribers and switchers — and made the telco the fastest-growing postpaid brand in the Philippines, outpacing the overall postpaid market’s 28 percent growth, in just the first nine months of 2012.

‘Ultimate’ mobile and broadband services

 For its prepaid users — which account for 90 percent of its subscribers — Smart launched a string of what it called the “ultimate unlimited” services, the first in the country to combine “tri-net” call and text services with data.

The Tri-Net Unli series allows one to make unlimited calls and text messages to any Smart, Talk ‘N Text, or Sun Cellular subscriber for as low as just P40 a day, while Mega All In 250 provides a month’s worth of unlimited text messages to all networks, voice minutes, and data, for only P250.

Smart also expanded its broadband services in 2012. It launched the Smart Flexisurf Plans, a set of worry-free postpaid broadband packages that come in various combinations and price points. These are the P299/month SIM-only plan, the Power Plug-It Plan 499, and the Pocket Wi-Fi Plan 599. FlexiSurf plans may also be bundled with a netbook or a tablet of their choice, for an amortized and discounted amount.

A call to the youth

 Toward end-2012, a Smart commercial featuring a musical collaboration between Filipino-American artists apl.de.ap and Jessica Sanchez took the Internet by storm, eliciting raves from young netizens who felt inspired by the video’s “Jump In” message.

Shortly thereafter and with students among the top users of mobile technology, Smart launched the Jump In SIM, which encouraged young barkadas to jump in to the country’s most reliable network and stay connected with each other without hurting their pockets.

More Jump In offers are in the pipeline for 2013.

With 52.6 million Filipinos on its supercharged network, and more and more subscribers choosing to Live More, Smart in 2012 cemented its position as the country’s biggest and most reliable wireless services provider.