By Jagmeet Singh
Publication Date: 2026-03-01 17:30:00
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 protections on the platform.
On Sunday, Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telecom operator with over 463 million subscribers, said it had partnered with Google to integrate the carrier’s network-level spam filtering into the RCS ecosystem in the country. The move is aimed at strengthening protections against unwanted messages and fraud on the platform, the companies said.
India has emerged as a particularly challenging market for spam and fraud across messaging channels, driven by the country’s vast mobile user base, rapid growth in digital payments, and aggressive enterprise marketing practices. In 2022, complaints about unsolicited ads on Google’s RCS — delivered primarily through the Google Messages app — were significant enough to prompt the company to temporarily pause business promotions…
