Airtel To Spot International Spam Calls And SMS, Alert Users In 10 Indian Languages

Hyderabad: Bharti Airtel has announced the expansion of its spam detection and alert system with two new features. From now on, Airtel's AI-powered spam detection tool will also screen and notify customers about spam calls and SMSes originating from international networks. Additionally, Airtel customers will receive such spam alerts in their preferred languages as the system now supports 10 Indian languages.

"After carefully analysing customer feedback, we have enhanced our solutions to better serve the linguistic diversity of India. Additionally, with the growing volume of spam traffic shifting to foreign networks, we have decided to expand our AI-powered tool to scan all SMS messages and phone calls originating from international numbers," said Siddharth Sharma, Director Marketing and CEO Connected Homes, Bharti Airtel.

The telecom company explained that after intensifying efforts to combat domestic spam calls, scammers and spammers began exploiting foreign networks to funnel fraudulent calls into India. This concerning trend led to a 12 per cent rise in overseas spam calls over the past six months, Airtel said, expressing confidence that its new feature would effectively address this growing challenge.

Airtel has expanded its spam protection tool with two new features (Airtel)

Airtel's AI-driven spam solution will now notify users about calls and messages from both domestic and international numbers in 10 Indian languages, which include Hindi and nine vernacular languages: Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Urdu, Punjabi and Telugu.

Airtel plans to add more vernacular languages in the future. Notably, spam alert notifications in all nine vernacular languages are only accessible to customers using Android devices.

The newly announced spam protection features will be free for customers and will be auto-activated for all Airtel customers without them having to raise a service request.

Airtel launched its "industry-first" anti-spam tool in September 2024 to provide customers relief from unwanted communications as well as fraudulent calls and SMSes. According to Airtel, it has identified 27.5 billion calls to date, which translates to 1560 spam calls every second. Since its launch in September 2024, Airtel claims that its customers have seen a 16 per cent decrease in spam calls.