As a first-of-its-kind solution by a telecom service provider (TSP) in the country, Bharti Airtel (Airtel) on Wednesday launched artificial intelligence (AI) powered spam detection solution that will significantly solve the issue of spam calls and messages for its customers.
The tool will alert customers in real-time to all suspected spam calls and SMSes, the company said, adding that the solution is free of cost. It will get auto-activated for all Airtel customers without them having to raise a service request or download an app.
However, the company also said that it will not be able to control calls on platforms like WhatsApp because they are encrypted and that is why the industry has been saying that these platforms need to get into licence regime.
SPAM CALLS
“Right now we can’t control spam calls from platforms like WhatsApp because they are all encrypted... that is one of the pain points that the industry has raised. Also, this detection service will be available only for smartphones and not the feature phones. We are working now to see whether it can be done for feature phone users too,” Gopal Vittal, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Airtel said.
TSPs for long have been urging the government and telecom regulator to bring OTT platforms on licencing regime as such platforms have been on the TSP’s network for providing call and messaging services.
Spam has become a true menace for customers and Airtel has spent the last 12 months in trying solve this comprehensively, Vittal said, adding that designed as a dual-layer protection, the solution has two filters – one at the network layer and the second at the IT systems layer.
“Every call and SMS passes through this dual-layered AI shield. In two milliseconds, our solution processes 1.5 billion messages and 2.5 billion calls every day. This is equivalent to processing one-trillion records on a real time basis using the power of AI. Our solution has been able to successfully identify 100 million potential spam calls and three million spam SMSes originating every day,” Vittal added.
Developed in-house by Airtel’s data scientists, the AI-powered solution uses a proprietary algorithm to identify and classify calls and SMSes as “Suspected SPAM”. The network powered by state-of-the-art AI algorithm analyses various parameters such as the caller or sender’s usage patterns, call/SMS frequency, call duration amongst several others, on a real time basis, the company said.
By cross-referencing this information against known spam patterns, the system flags suspected spam calls and SMSes accurately, it added.
COLLABORATIVE STEPS
Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) are also taking collaborative steps to enhance the experience of users of telecom services. DoT recently said that more than 3.5 lakh fraudulent numbers were disconnected and 50 entities were blacklisted. More than one crore fraudulent mobile connections have been also disconnected with the help of Sancharsaathi, they said.
Government has also allocated 10-digit numbers with the prefix 160 to for service and transactional calls. Customers can expect to receive calls from these 160-prefix series assigned to Banks, Mutual Funds, Insurance Companies, stockbrokers, other financial institutions, Corporates, Enterprises, SMEs, big and small businesses used for making transactional and service calls.