Both the operators have stopped issuing plastic roaming to new subscribers with only auto roaming services on offer now. Efforts are also on to switch the existing plastic roaming customers to automatic roaming. Says Srivatsan, who heads the auto roaming department in RPG Cellular, "We have about 200 auto-roaming customers with us and we have already embarked on an exercise of talking to our plastic roaming customers to convert them to auto-roaming, which is much more convenient."

A similar view is echoed by Skycell chief financial officer Venkatraman, who says that auto-roaming has many advantages of being available at the dial of one number which accesses the subscriber anywhere in the country. There would be no need to track the cellphone holder through his travel itinerary across the country, as the home network number isencompassive.

There are also inherent advantages of billing which are convenient both to the service providers as well as the customer. Usually, the bills on roaming are filed at least two months after the use of the service. This is because, for plastic roaming, other operators who `lend' their network raise a collective bill on the home network at the end of the month - by which time the subscribers' monthly bill has already been sent. The bill for each individual subscriber who used the facility has to be incorporated into the individual's account. And generally, this process has many cross verifications which lead to a further delay with the tab being put on the bill after two months.

For example, if a subscriber in Chennai has availed of roaming in Mumbai the Mumbai operator will consolidate all the subscribers from Chennai who used his network at the end of the month and send a collective statement to the Chennai operator, who then segregates the calls of different subscribers in that month and putsthem on the respective bills.

The delay in the billing process becomes a major administrative hassle and the subscriber also faces the inconvenience of delayed bills which skews his paying pattern.

On the other hand, in auto-roaming the bills would be raised by the clearing house each day with the roaming charges incorporated in the monthly bills.But while these are the advantages of auto-roaming, the scheme is not without its drawbacks either. One such point is when a subscriber goes to another network, say a city like Mumbai. For a person calling him from Mumbai, the call still goes to the home network in Chennai and then back to Mumbai, saddling him with a long-distance bill for a local call.

But these can be overcome once the subscriber becomes savvy, say the operators.

The other factor is that the price of auto-roaming is right now pretty high, with a security deposit of Rs 10,000 and monthly rentals of Rs 1,500 apart from the airtime charges.

The third is that not all networks have completedthe auto-roaming testing and hence are not hooked up. This means that the subscribers are given a mix of auto and plastic roaming options. This is one of the main reasons that the operators have not started pushing aggressively for auto-roaming.But once the whole country is wired, they would get their marketing act off the ground, they said.

Another key factor which prevents the operators from continuing with plastic roaming is the fact that the free numbers on fora like Global Connect and World One have been exhausted. And since there is no real reason for getting a new set of numbers when there is a more convenient alternative available, the operators will now opt for auto-roaming as the better alternative. So far, auto-roaming has not picked up as the negatives outweigh the positives especially when it comes to the money angle. RPG has about 200 and Skycell 100. But the total plastic roaming base between the two operators is around 17,000-18,000 and there is still a long way to go. Srivatsa andVenkatraman are unanimous when they say: "Auto-roaming is the technology of the future and, after the initial resistance, the subscribers are likely to opt for it."

But meanwhile, for those who already have a plastic roaming card and have no intention of getting into auto-roaming at present, the service will continue as usual, they added.