Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Mittal on Monday made a strong case for a hike in tariffs and a cut in government levies to save the industry.

Mittal said as much as 35 per cent of the industry’s revenues go towards paying taxes even as Airtel and Vodafone are burdened with high AGR (adjusted gross revenue) dues along with spectrum payments.

Speaking at an analyst call following the announcement by Airtel of a Rs 21,000-crore rights issue on Sunday, Mittal said the issue proceeds would be used in the rollout of 5G services, fibre and the data centre business.

“People are consuming average 16GB of data per user per month. It is time that tariffs do take a tick up to make the industry viable and, more importantly, have decent and appropriate returns on capital to grow into more technology areas, to roll out more networks, and become a more viable model of sustainability in the future,” Mittal said.

He stressed that the industry needs to have a “right economic model”, and rued that “for far too long, we have played in this game by growing this industry at a very minimal pricing level”. Levies are far too high in the telecom sector, Mittal said adding that “levies and the load on industry needs to be brought down”.

Mittal made it clear that Airtel will not shy away from raising tariffs. He argued that tariff changes effected by Airtel over the last few months are a “testimony” that the company has indeed “run out of patience”.

Asked if Airtel will take a lead in raising tariffs in the future, Mittal said that the company has already been doing it in a limited manner by pushing up base tariffs to Rs 79.

“Can this go to Rs 99 eventually, my answer is yes, the question is when... In the end, we are also bound by market forces, we can’t be outlier beyond a point. You can be having some premium given the strength of the brand but you can’t go beyond a point where you start to hurt yourself,” Mittal observed.

“We have seen the worst tariff war, and contraction in average revenue per user,” he said.