Bharti Airtel has taken a significant step in the fight against telecom fraud by proposing a joint initiative to fellow telecom giants Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea. The move aims to unite the Indian telecom industry to collectively tackle the growing menace of scams, spams, and cyber fraud targeting millions of users nationwide.
In letters sent to the Department of Telecommunications and telecom regulator TRAI, Airtel highlighted alarming statistics revealing over 1.7 million cybercrime complaints in India during the first nine months of 2024, resulting in financial losses exceeding Rs 11,000 crore. The company emphasized the urgent need for collaboration to combat increasingly sophisticated digital frauds involving phishing links, fake loan offers, and fraudulent payment portals.
Airtel has already enhanced its anti-fraud measures by deploying AI-powered detection systems to block malicious URLs and rogue sites across popular communication platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, and Instagram. However, the company stressed that these efforts must be complemented by coordinated industry-wide actions to effectively safeguard consumers.
The proposed Joint Telecom Fraud Initiative, slated for launch on May 14, 2025, seeks to enable real-time fraud intelligence sharing and cross-network coordination among all telecom service providers (TSPs). Airtel recalled that it had earlier suggested a collaborative approach in October 2024 to address unsolicited commercial communications (UCC), proposing a centralized data-sharing platform modeled on the existing Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) system.
Airtel Vice Chairman and Managing Director Gopal Vittal is expected to soon communicate directly with customers about the escalating threat of financial scams. He will highlight Airtel’s fraud detection advancements, including solutions that scan for suspicious links on OTT apps and social media platforms, blocking them instantaneously when users are connected to Airtel’s mobile or Wi-Fi networks.
Vittal warned that fraudsters have become more organized, now targeting users via calls, texts, emails, and messaging apps with urgent-looking messages that imitate trusted service providers. “These links appear genuine and are difficult to distinguish from real ones. Clicking on them can lead to theft of personal and financial information,” he said.
With the new initiative and technological safeguards, Airtel hopes to curb the surge in telecom fraud and protect millions of Indian users from cybercriminal activities.