Airtel has reached out to Reliance Jio and Vodafone Idea with a proposal for a combined industry move to counter the sharp rise in telecom fraud and scams across India. The company informed the government and the regulator that it wants all telecom operators to work together and protect users from deceptive and malicious schemes that continue to target vulnerable individuals.
In its communication to the other operators, Airtel cited alarming figures that India recorded more than 1.7 million cybercrime complaints in the first nine months of 2024, leading to financial losses of over Rs 11000 crore. The push for collective action comes as cybercriminals adopt highly advanced methods including phishing links, fake loan offers and fraudulent payment pages, which have increased digital fraud and identity theft incidents.
Airtel said it has intensified its efforts against digital spams and scams. In recent weeks, the Sunil Mittal led telecom company has introduced a fraud detection solution to block harmful sites across communication apps and platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Facebook and Instagram. In letters to senior officials, Airtel wrote that the recent rise in malicious URL based scams showed that more coordinated industry action was essential because these schemes often take advantage of gaps in coordination between service providers.
Updating the telecom department and the regulator, Airtel said it has once again contacted telecom service providers with a plan to launch a Joint Telecom Fraud Initiative on May 14, 2025. The company said the initiative would help all operators work together to detect, prevent and reduce telecom fraud through real time intelligence sharing and improved cross network coordination. Airtel also recalled that in October 2024 it had urged all operators to take a joint approach on the issue of unsolicited commercial communications and had proposed a standard sharing of corporate connection details and a central data sharing platform similar to the existing Distributed Ledger Technology system to strengthen collective action against misuse.
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