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

As persistent spam complaints have clouded Google’s Rich Communication Services (RCS) business in India, the company is turning to deeper carrier integration to strengthen security on the platform.

Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator with more than 463 million subscribers, said on Sunday it has worked with Google to integrate the carrier’s network-level spam filtering into the RCS ecosystem in the country. The measure is aimed at strengthening protection against unwanted messages and fraud on the platform, the companies said.

India has proved to be a particularly challenging market for spam and fraud across messaging channels, driven by the country’s massive mobile user base, the rapid growth of digital payments and aggressive corporate marketing practices. In 2022, complaints about unsolicited advertising on Google’s RCS – delivered primarily through the Google Messages app – were significant enough to prompt the company to temporarily pause business promotions on the platform in India. However, some users keep reporting frustration with spam messages on Google Messages, in which the problem has not completely disappeared yet.

Airtel said it had been cautious about deeper alignment with Google’s RCS until it could route traffic through its own spam checks, highlighting airline concerns about rising fraud risks.

“We didn’t bring Google on board because we wanted RCS messages to pass through the Airtel spam filter first,” an Airtel spokesperson said.

Under the partnership, Airtel’s network intelligence will be combined with Google’s RCS platform to enable real-time monitoring of business messages, including sender authentication, spam detection and enforcement of users’ do-not-disturb preferences. Airtel described the move as a “global first” for directly integrating a telecom operator’s spam filtering into an over-the-top messaging platform, although the companies did not provide comparative details.

“We are committed to continuing to work with the broader carrier ecosystem to create a consistent and trusted messaging experience for RCS users around the world,” said Sameer Samat, president of the Android ecosystem at Google, in a statement. The note indicates that the company may be looking to expand the model beyond India as it works to standardize security across the RCS ecosystem.

India represents a crucial market for Google’s messaging ambitions, with more than a billion internet users and over 700 million smartphone users. The country is also home to more than 853 million WhatsApp usersAccording to World Population Review, this underlines the scale of competition in mobile messaging.

Prabhu Ram, vice president of the industrial research group at CyberMedia Research, said the deeper carrier integration reflects efforts to close long-standing weaknesses in rich messaging ecosystems that are vulnerable to spam and fraud.

“The effectiveness 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 ramped up its anti-spam efforts over the past year and says its AI-powered systems have blocked more than 71 billion spam calls and 2.9 billion spam messages, reducing fraud-related financial losses on its network by nearly 69%.

More broadly, Google is positioning RCS as the successor to SMS, saying in May 2025 that the standard was processing more than a billion messages daily in the US, based on a 28-day average.

Google did not say whether similar carrier integrations are planned for other markets, nor did it provide estimates of the extent to which the move could reduce spam and fraud.