Bharti Airtel, the second-largest telecom operator in India recently announced that it has deployed an AI (artificial intelligence) solution for catching spam communication on its networks. The telco has now shared data for spam communication in the Maharashtra region. After deploying the solution on its network in Maharashtra, Airtel detected 70 million potential spam calls in Maharashtra in seven days. During the same period, over 1.2 million spam messages were also detected. This is just for one state. The benefit of this solution is directly to the customer/user of Airtel. Now Airtel users will be able to understand if they are receiving a call or a message that could be a potential spam.
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One rule that users in India must remember is that TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) has allocated different numbering series for promotional calls and calls that are meant for transactions or services. Transactional or service calls from banks, mutual funds, insurance companies, and more will come from a 10-digit number with 160 as a prefix. At the same time, all the promotional or marketing calls will shift to the numbers with the prefix 140.
"33 million Airtel customers in Maharashtra no longer have to worry about any such frauds since Airtel has empowered them with a defence mechanism that will alert them to all such spam calls and SMSes in real-time," said George Mathen, Chief Executive Officer, Maharashtra and Goa, Bharti Airtel.
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Bharti Airtel will also communicate or send alerts to customers about malicious links through SMS. The telco has already built its own centralised database of blacklisted URLs and every SMS is scanned in real time by a state-of-the-art AI algorithm to caution users from accidently clicking on suspicious links. The solution can also detect anomalies such as frequent IMEI changes – a typical indicator of fraudulent behaviour.
