Google looks to tackle longstanding RCS spam in India — but not alone

Google looks to tackle longstanding RCS spam in India — but not alone

As persistent spam complaints have clouded Google’s Rich Communication Services (RCS) push in India, the company is popping to deeper provider integration to bolster protections on the platform.

On Sunday, Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator with over 463 million subscribers, said it had partnered with Google to combine the provider’s network-level spam filtering into the RCS ecosystem in the nation. The transfer is geared toward strengthening protections against undesirable messages and fraud on the platform, the firms said.

India has emerged as a very difficult market for spam and fraud across messaging channels, pushed by the nation’s huge cell consumer base, fast development in digital funds, and aggressive enterprise advertising and marketing practices. In 2022, complaints about unsolicited adverts on Google’s RCS — delivered primarily by way of the Google Messages app — have been important sufficient to immediate the company to briefly pause enterprise promotions on the platform in India. However, some customers continue to report frustration with spam messages on Google Messages, suggesting the issue has not totally abated.

Airtel said it had been cautious about deeper alignment with Google’s RCS until visitors could possibly be routed by way of its personal spam controls, highlighting provider issues about rising fraud dangers.

“We had not onboarded Google because we first wanted RCS messages to be routed through the Airtel spam filter,” an Airtel spokesperson said.

Under the partnership, Airtel’s network intelligence will probably be mixed with Google’s RCS platform to allow real-time checks on enterprise messaging, including sender verification, spam detection, and enforcement of customers’ do-not-disturb preferences. Airtel described the transfer as a “global first” for integrating a telecom operator’s spam filtering immediately into an over-the-top messaging platform, though the firms did not present comparative particulars.

“We are committed to continuing to work with the broader ecosystem of carriers to create a consistent and trusted messaging experience for RCS users around the world,” Sameer Samat, president of Android ecosystem at Google, said in a press release. The remark alerts the company could look to lengthen the mannequin past India as it really works to standardize safety across the RCS ecosystem.

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India represents a vital marketplace for Google’s messaging ambitions, with more than a billion web customers and over 700 million smartphone customers. The nation is also dwelling to over 853 million WhatsApp customers, according to World Population Review, underlining the scale of competitors in cell messaging.

Prabhu Ram, vp for the trade research group at CyberMedia Research, said the deeper provider integration displays efforts to plug longstanding weaknesses in wealthy messaging ecosystems that have been weak to spam and fraud.

“The efficacy of this partnership should be reflected in metrics such as reductions in spam volume, user complaints, and fraud incidence, as well as improvements in engagement with legitimate messages,” Ram told TechCrunch.

Airtel has been stepping up its anti-spam efforts over the past yr, saying its AI-led programs have blocked more than 71 billion spam calls and a pair of.9 billion spam messages, serving to drive an almost 69% drop in fraud-related monetary losses on its network.

More broadly, Google has been positioning RCS as the successor to SMS, saying in May 2025 that the commonplace was dealing with more than a billion messages daily in the U.S., based on a 28-day common.

Google did not say whether or not related provider integrations are deliberate for other markets or present estimates for a way a lot the transfer may cut back spam and fraud.

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