By Pragati Saha
Google has improved its Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging feature by adding a spam filter and anti-fraud technology produced by Airtel. This is due to the increase in online scams targeting mobile users in the country.
On Sunday, 1st March Airtel announced that it had partnered with Google to launch its artificial-intelligence- based spam filters and threat detection technology for its RCS chats via the Google Messages application, which is available in most of the android phones.
As a part of the partnership, Google’s RCS platform would use Airtel’s intelligence to verify the identity of the message sender based on the result of the business identity check carried out by Airtel. Along with, the platform will also use Airtel’s service to respect the Do Not Disturb (DND) preference of the users by categorizing the communication as promotional or transactional and imposing restrictions.
Moreover, if the spam filter of both Google and Airtel detects the account as suspicious, the platform will limit the account’s ability to send messages. The partnership goes beyond the level of protecting against spam and scams at the TSP level and extends to OTT communication platforms. The partnership takes place at a time when there has been some disagreement between telecom operators and tech giants in India on some policy issues.
The issue is that the Department of Telecommunication (DoT) mandates the SIM binding, which came into effect from 1st March, 2026.
The mandate issued by the DoT implies that those who use various communication platforms such as Whatsapp, Signal and Telegram would not have the opportunity of accessing the different platforms without a SIM card through which the services are registered in their phones. It also says that users cannot use the web version without logging out every six hours.
Airtel made a claim that their initiative of anti-spam/scam has resulted in a total of 71 billion spam calls and 2.9 billion spam messages being blocked on their network throughout the country, which resulted in a 68.7 % decline in the value of the financial losses faced by the scam victims.