Bharti Airtel has underlined that voice and data tariffs need to go up and the operator has called for a more disciplined approach to pricing for an industry faced with growing input costs amid continuing pricing pressure on voice business.

The operator expects data tariffs in particular to gradually rise in the coming months as key input costs towards spectrum payouts and network rollouts are expected to rise.

In an earnings call scheduled following the announcement of the operator’s financial results for the first quarter of 2015, the company's outgoing global chief financial officer B Srikant, who has been re-designated as global chief human resources officer stated that data prices are likely to go up in a calibrated manner to match adoption levels and also improve profitability. Data is seen as the company's big growth engine, particularly with data traffic growing at 83.4 per cent in the first quarter ended June 2015, when net profit of the operator increased by 40 per cent, driven by strong minutes and data volume growth and a one-time sale of tower assets in Africa.

Going forward, Airtel plans to accelerate both 3G and 4G rollouts to net in more high value data customers, by leveraging its sizeable data spectrum holdings. Meanwhile, the operator is also keen on tapping business opportunities offered by voice-over-long term evolution.