Google is trying to tackle long-standing RCS spam in India — but not alone

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

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

India has emerged as a particularly demanding market for spam and fraud in messaging channels, driven by the country’s huge mobile user base, rapid growth in digital payments and aggressive business marketing practices. In 2022, complaints about spammy ads on Google’s RCS — delivered primarily through the Google Messages app — were significant enough to prompt the company to temporarily halt business promotions on the platform in India. However, some users continue to report frustration by spamming Google Messages by recommending it the matter has not completely subsided.

Airtel said it was cautious about aligning deeper with Google’s RCS until the rollout can be routed through its own spam checks, underscoring the carrier’s concerns about growing fraud risks.

“We didn’t integrate with Google because we wanted RCS messages to be routed through Airtel’s 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 checks on business messages, including sender verification, spam detection and enforcement of users’ do not disturb preferences. Airtel described the move as a “world first” to integrate a telco’s spam filtering directly into a state-of-the-art messaging platform, although the companies did not provide comparative details.

“We are committed to continuing to work with the broader ecosystem of carriers to create a consistent and reliable messaging experience for RCS users around the world,” Sameer Samat, president of Google’s Android ecosystem, said in a statement. The comment signals 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 critical market for Google’s messaging ambitions, with more than a billion internet users and over 700 million smartphone users. The country also hosts over 853 million WhatsApp usersaccording to the World Population Review, highlighting the scale of competition in mobile messaging.

Prabhu Ram, vice president of industry research group CyberMedia Research, said the deeper integration of providers reflects efforts to repair long-standing weaknesses in rich messaging ecosystems that were vulnerable to spam and fraud.

“The effectiveness of this partnership should be reflected in metrics such as reduced spam volume, user complaints and fraud frequency, as well as improvements in engagement with legitimate messages,” Ram told TechCrunch.

Airtel has been ramping up its anti-spam efforts over the past year, saying its AI-powered systems have blocked more than 71 billion spam calls and 2.9 billion spam messages, helping reduce fraud-related financial losses on its network by nearly 69%.

More broadly, Google has positioned RCS as the successor to SMS, saying in May 2025 that the standard handled 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 or provide estimates of how much the move could reduce spam and fraud.