A top Indian telecom industry association said it is collaborating with the UK government for spam and scam prevention in telecom networks and trusted artificial intelligence (AI). <\/p>\n
\u201cI am glad to say that this is the first initiative COAI has taken to collaborate with the UK government (through) the High Commission in India, and we are grateful to them for agreeing to collaborate with us to bring forth this initiative,\u201d SP Kochhar, director-general, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), said at an industry conference on Monday. <\/p>\n
Kochhar spoke at the CO.AI 2026 conference, jointly organised by the Delhi-based COAI and the UK government. <\/p>\n
The industry group represents incumbent telcos Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, and Vodafone Idea (Vi).<\/p>\n
“Governments have a responsibility to ensure innovation progresses alongside security, accountability and resilience, and that’s even more essential when criminals are using AI to aid scams. But AI is part of the solution too; it can help institutions move from reacting to individual incidents towards recognising patterns of harm early,” said Ben Mellor, Acting British High Commissioner to Republic of India.<\/p>\n
Mallor added, “That is the entire purpose of the UK’s engagement today, and why this MoU matters: it starts with a defined public interest problem rather than a broad declaration of intent and gives our partnership with COAI the continuity to keep working together long after today.” <\/p>\n
In recent months, the top telcos, together with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), have sharpened their efforts to cut down instances of spam and scam communications through various measures, including AI-based tools, in a bid to significantly improve subscriber experience and reduce financial losses to unsuspecting users. <\/p>\n
The telecom regulator, in a report for Q1FY27, said that AI-based spam detection flagged 24.43 billion suspected spam calls and SMSs, enabling consumers to exercise the choice of either ignoring such communication or taking such calls with caution. <\/p>\n
Over 243,000 warning notifications were issued to the suspected senders within one week of commencement of such notifications. Overall, action was taken against 183,000 telecom resources, along with blacklisting of 263 senders in the first quarter of FY27, TRAI had said. <\/p>\n
Rahul Vatts, chairperson of COAI, said the strong emphasis on fraud and scam prevention resonates sharply with India\u2019s regulatory policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cCOAI will take steps in this direction by signing an MoU between the COAI and the British High Commission\u2026the ceremonial working framework gives us a basis to continue cooperation on fraud and scam prevention, on trusted technology, on responsible AI and also on consumer protection and capacity building,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
He further highlighted that the industry has started taking steps to flag spam and, under TRAI\u2019s directions, taking action against actors \u201cpolluting\u201d mobile networks with unsolicited commercial communications (UCC).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can now effectively warn the customer of the choices he has when he is getting a spam call. I think this has a strategic significance. And as we start transitioning, this is a very important step in how we can use the power of AI to deliver safety and trust to the customer,\u201d said Vatts, who is the group chief regulatory officer & director of corporate affairs at Airtel.<\/p>\n
Vatts cited the country\u2019s IndiaAI Mission, which has surpassed 38,000 empanelled graphics processing units (GPUs) for providing subsidised access to AI compute to researchers, academia, and startups, among others, at 40% lower rates than public prices.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe philosophy behind this is very deliberate. AI has to be for all,\u201d the top Airtel executive said, adding that a democratised capability must reach the smallest enterprises in the remotest of the locations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndia’s digital public infrastructure, whether it is Aadhaar or ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce), has already shown the world that population-scale inclusive digital systems like AI are the next layer being built on the same foundation as the telecom,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s vision of sovereign compute, inclusive access, and safe deployment all depend on the resilience of the networks which the industry is deploying, he added.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that is why AI and telecom must be used as one continuum rather than two separate conversations,\u201d Vatts said.<\/p>\n
Ravi P Gandhi, vice chairman, COAI & President and Chief Public Policy and Regulatory Officer, Reliance Jio Infocomm, said, “COAI brings together India’s leading telecom operators, representing nearly 95% of the market, to build this dialogue with industry, government and regulators. The UK brings deep experience in fraud prevention and tackling serious, organised crime. This partnership with the British High Commission is not limited to today’s event \u2014 it is the start of sustained cooperation on fraud and scam prevention.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A top Indian telecom industry association said it is collaborating with the UK government for spam and scam prevention in telecom networks and trusted artificial intelligence (AI). \u201cI am glad to say that this is the first initiative COAI has taken to collaborate with the UK government (through) the High Commission in India, and we are grateful to them for agreeing to collaborate with us to bring forth this initiative,\u201d SP Kochhar, director-general, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), said at an industry conference on Monday. Kochhar spoke at the CO.AI 2026 conference, jointly organised by the Delhi-based COAI and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1035617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1035617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1035624,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035617\/revisions\/1035624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1035617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1035617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1035617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}