Amid persistent complaints about spam casting a shadow over Google’s Rich Communication Services (RCS) expansion in India, the company is now pursuing enhanced carrier integration to fortify the platform’s security measures.
On Sunday, Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecommunications operator, serving over 463 million subscribers, announced a strategic partnership with Google. This collaboration aims to integrate Airtel’s network-level spam filtering capabilities directly into the country’s RCS ecosystem. Both companies stated that this initiative is designed to bolster protections against unsolicited messages and fraudulent activities on the platform.
India has emerged as a particularly challenging environment for spam and fraud across various messaging channels. This is primarily attributed to the nation’s vast mobile user base, the rapid acceleration of digital payments, and aggressive enterprise marketing practices. In 2022, the volume of complaints concerning unsolicited advertisements on Google’s RCS, delivered predominantly through the Google Messages app, was significant enough to prompt the company to temporarily suspend business promotions on the platform in India. However, ongoing reports from some users continue to express frustration with spam messages on Google Messages, indicating that the issue has not been entirely resolved.
Airtel revealed its prior hesitation regarding deeper integration with Google’s RCS, emphasizing that it preferred to route traffic through its proprietary spam controls first, a stance driven by escalating carrier concerns over fraud risks.
"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 terms of the partnership, Airtel’s network intelligence will be combined with Google’s RCS platform to facilitate real-time scrutiny of business messaging. This includes comprehensive sender verification, robust spam detection, and rigorous enforcement of users' do-not-disturb preferences. Airtel described this development as a "global first" for directly integrating a telecom operator's spam filtering into an over-the-top messaging platform, though neither company provided specific comparative details.
"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 statement. This comment suggests Google's potential strategy to extend this collaborative model beyond India as it endeavors to standardize security protocols across the global RCS ecosystem.
India represents a crucial market for Google’s messaging ambitions, boasting a user base of more than a billion internet users and over 700 million smartphone users. The country is also home to over 853 million WhatsApp users, according to World Population Review, underscoring the intense competitive landscape within mobile messaging.
Prabhu Ram, vice president for the industry research group at CyberMedia Research, commented that this deeper carrier integration reflects a concerted effort to address longstanding weaknesses in rich messaging ecosystems that have historically been vulnerable 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.
Over the past year, Airtel has significantly intensified its anti-spam initiatives. The company reports that its AI-powered systems have successfully blocked over 71 billion spam calls and 2.9 billion spam messages, contributing to an approximately 69% reduction in fraud-related financial losses across its network.
More broadly, Google has consistently positioned RCS as the intended successor to SMS, stating in May 2025 that the standard was processing over a billion messages daily in the U.S., based on a 28-day average.
Google did not disclose whether similar carrier integrations are slated for other markets, nor did it provide projections regarding the potential reduction in spam and fraud resulting from this initiative.
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