Google and Airtel partner to curb RCS spam in India

On Sunday, Indian telecommunications operator Bharti Airtel, which has 463 million subscribers, announced a partnership with Google to integrate the carrier’s network-level spam filtering directly into the Rich Communication Services (RCS) ecosystem in India. RCS is an over-the-top messaging platform, which provides messaging services over the internet rather than traditional carrier SMS. The companies stated that the partnership aims to strengthen protections against unwanted messages and fraud on the platform. The integration represents a “global first” for combining a telecom operator’s spam filtering directly into an over-the-top messaging platform. An Airtel spokesperson explained the carrier’s previous stance, stating, “We had not onboarded Google because we first wanted RCS messages to be routed through the Airtel spam filter.”

The partnership addresses the issues of spam and fraud within the RCS ecosystem in India. The country is a major market for mobile messaging, with more than a billion internet users and over 700 million smartphone users. In this market, Google’s messaging platform, Google Messages, competes for user attention with WhatsApp, a competitor messaging platform that has over 853 million users in India.

Airtel has already deployed its own systems to combat these issues. The operator reported that its AI-led systems have blocked 71 billion spam calls and 2.9 billion spam messages, helping drive nearly 69% drop in fraud-related financial losses on its network. Commenting on the integration, Prabhu Ram, vice president for the industry research group at CyberMedia Research, noted that the success of the partnership should be reflected in metrics such as reductions in spam volume, user complaints, and fraud cases, alongside better engagement with legitimate messages.

The security model established in India could serve as a template for other regions. Sameer Samat, president of Android ecosystem at Google, indicated that the company may look to extend this model beyond India as it works to standardize security across the RCS ecosystem. Samat stated that the company is committed to working with the broader ecosystem of carriers to create a consistent and trusted messaging experience for RCS users around the world. This effort comes as the protocol grows in other markets; in May 2025, Google stated that RCS was handling more than a billion messages daily in the U.S.

Why it matters

This partnership marks a “global first” for integrating a telecom operator’s spam filtering directly into an over-the-top messaging platform, potentially signaling a model for other markets to standardize security across the RCS ecosystem.