Airtel approaches Reliance Jio, Vodafone Idea on joint telecom initiative against fraud
New Delhi: Airtel has informed the government and regulator
Trai
that it has approached
Reliance Jio
and
Vodafone Idea
with a proposal for a joint initiative to unite the industry against rising telecom fraud and scams. Airtel has also urged all telcos to collaborate and collectively address the growing threat of deceptive and malicious scams targeting vulnerable individuals.
In separate letters to the telcos, it cited data that India recorded over 1.7 million cybercrime complaints in the first nine months of 2024, resulting in financial losses exceeding ₹11,000 crore.
The call for action comes at a time when cybercriminals are using increasingly sophisticated tactics like phishing links, fake loan offers, and fraudulent payment pages, leading to a surge in digital fraud and identity theft incidents.
Airtel has upped the ante on the war on digital spams and scams, and the last few weeks have seen the Sunil Mittal-led telco rolling out fraud detection solution to block rogue sites across communication OTT apps, and platforms, including WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook, Instagram and others.
"However, given the recent alarming rise in phishing attempts and malicious URL-based scams targeting unsuspecting individuals, it became evident that more coordinated industry action was needed. These sophisticated fraud schemes often exploit the gaps in coordination between service providers," Airtel wrote in letters to
Telecom Secretary Neeraj Mittal
and Trai Chairman Anil Kumar Lahoti.
Updating the telecom department and Trai on its efforts, Airtel said that to combat "this growing threat" of telecom frauds, spams and scams and in the spirit of unified industry action, it has once again reached out to TSPs with a proposal to launch a Joint Telecom Fraud Initiative on May 14, 2025.
"This initiative would bring together all TSPs to collaboratively detect, prevent, and mitigate telecom fraud and scams across our networks through real-time fraud intelligence sharing and cross-network coordination," Airtel said in the letters.
Airtel recalled that in October of 2024, it had written to all Telecom Service providers (TSPs) with a proposal to adopt a collaborative approach to address the growing issue of Unsolicited Commercial Communications (UCC).
The proposal emphasised the mutual sharing of details of corporate connections used for commercial calling in a standardised format to enable proactive spam monitoring and mitigate any potential misuse.
"We also proposed the establishment of a centralised data-sharing platform akin to the existing Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) system to enhance our collective ability to combat UCC without disrupting legitimate enterprise services," Airtel said.
Meanwhile, Airtel Vice Chairman and MD Gopal Vittal will soon reach out to customers on the issue of financial frauds and scams that have "become a regular threat for Indians".
Sources said the proposed mailer outreach by the top executive to customers will outline the various initiatives by Airtel, including an AI-powered solution launched last year to identify and mark suspicious spam calls and SMSes, and will also highlight new fraud detection solutions that will check for suspicious links across all Over the Top (OTT) apps and platforms, including social media apps, chat apps and messaging services and block it in real-time.
Vittal will caution customers that over the last year, scam attempts have evolved into something much more organised and dangerous.
"Fraudsters today are targeting people not just through calls and texts but also through chats, emails, social media apps and other platforms," he said.
Fraudsters send messages that sound urgent or worrying, pretending to be from a bank, electricity provider, or even a delivery company, just to get users to click on a link.
"And these links look absolutely genuine, almost impossible to tell apart from the real ones. Once you click, they extract your personal and financial information and use it to scam you. We are seeing an alarming surge in such threats in the last few days," he added.
Talking about the new solution, Vittal assures customers that whenever they are on the Airtel mobile network or connected to Airtel Wi-Fi, this added layer of protection will be active by default.
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