Bharti Airtel’s AI-based Spam Fighting Network identifies 682 million spam calls, 46 million spam SMSes in last 63 days in Karnataka

Bharti Airtel Karnataka Chief Executive Officer Rajnish Verma speaks to reporters in Mangaluru on November 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: ANIL KUMAR SASTRY

Bharti Airtel on November 27, 2024, said its new AI-based Airtel Spam Fighting Network has identified 682 million suspected spam calls and 46 million spam SMS in its Karnataka network in the 63 days since its launch.

Airtel Karnataka CEO Rajnish Verma told reporters here that a team of about 50 engineers spent over 10,000 man hours in the last one year to find out ways to protect customers from spammers. “Everyone was helpless when spammers used to make over 3 billion spam calls a year cheating gullible people.” Airtel, therefore, thought of devising some measure to protect its customers, he said.

Mr. Verma said the AI-powered solution developed in-house by Airtel data scientists uses a proprietary algorithm to identify and classify calls and SMSes as ‘suspected spam.’ This is done within 2 milliseconds when the call or the SMS passes through the Airtel network using about 250 parameters for filtering. Parameters include the usage pattern of the caller or the sender, call/SMS frequency, call duration, among other things. By cross-referencing this infomration against known spam patterns, the system flags suspected spam calls and messages, he said.

Dual-layered protection

The solution has two filters, one at the network layer and the other at the IT systems layer. With every call or SMS passing through this shield, the solution processes 1.5 billion messages and 2.5 billion calls in 2 milliseconds, Mr. Verma said. The solution also alerts customers about malicious links received via SMS with Airtel building a centralised database of blacklisted URLs. Every SMS is scanned in real-time by an AI algorithm to caution users from accidentally clicking on suspicious links.

Mr. Verma claimed that after the introduction of the Spam Fighting Network, there was nearly 90% drop in spam calls and SMSes in the recent days.