Cybercrime losses cut by nearly 70% using AI-based spam detection and blocking systems: Airtel

Bharti Airtel has reported a 68.7% reduction in financial losses from cybercrime and a 14.3% decline in overall cybercrime incidents on its network, the company shared quoting recent data from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), Ministry of Home Affairs.

“In the past one year, our AI-powered network solutions have identified over 48.3 billion spam calls and blocked 3.2 lakhs fraudulent links. However, we see this as small steps in a much larger fight. We will continue to innovate and invest heavily in this area until our networks are free of digital spam and scam,” said Gopal Vittal, Vice Chairman and Managing Director, Bharti Airtel, in a statement.

The MHA-I4C analysis compared key indicators including patterns to identify probable phishing scams, from September 2024 with June 2025. This was before Airtel launched its fraud and spam detection systems.

Some of the key measures the telecom service provider introduced to curb these scams and frauds include a network-based AI-powered spam detection solution which was launched in September last year, which is used to alert users to suspected spam calls and SMS in real-time. Similarly, a malicious link detection and blocking system was introduced in May this year.

Since the September deployment of these initiatives, the company stated that Airtel’s systems have flagged over 4,830 crore spam calls and blocked 3.20 lakh fraudulent links.

“The impact shared by the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C) - Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) encourages us tremendously and validates our efforts in this mission. I would like to commend the MHA I4C and DoT for their initiatives to curb spam and fraud and we will look forward to collaborating deeply with the authorities to eliminate the threats of cyber-crimes and frauds,” Vittal added.