Announcing the initiative, HMTL vice president (sales & marketing) Sanjeev Vohra said: "In the last two years since automatic roaming was introduced in the US, Hutchison and its associates have seen a 550 per cent growth in roaming subscriptions within its post-paid customer base. Over 80,000 customers of Hutchison and its associates in India subscribe to the roaming service."

"We see roaming as a key focus segment to drive revenues, especially since our associates offer quality networks in major metros and we can leverage our presence in these circles," Mr Vohra added.

Under this programme, national roaming customers will receive reward points based on their roaming usage in these Hutchison circles. These points can be earned on leading loyalty programmers - Flying Returns (Joint frequent flier programme of Air India & Indian Airlines), TOP (Frequent guest programme) of the Oberoi Group and with Bonus Rewards Programme of HSBC Credit Cards.

According to Mr Vohra: "The initial choice of these service providers has been done to provide maximum benefit of roaming our customers, since a majority of them frequently avail of the services to these service providers. The company has plans to rope in more partners to extend the benefits." Hutchison's associates in India have over 375 roaming relationships, providing connectivity to approximately 3 lakh Indian GSM customers and over 140 million international GSM customers into India at Delhi, Calcutta and Mumbai.

According to Mr Vohra, "The total roaming minutage per month in India today is in the range of approximately 25 million minutes, of which Hutchison and its associates in India account for 28 per cent."