Bharti Airtel has flagged a staggering eight billion spam calls and 0.8 billion spam SMSes within 2.5 months of launching its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered, spam-fighting solution. Leveraging this advanced algorithm, the AI-powered network has successfully identified close to one million spammers every day.
The company, in the last 2.5 months, has alerted close to 252 million unique customers to these suspicious calls and has observed that there has been a 12 per cent decline in the number of customers answering them. Six per cent of all calls on the Airtel network have been identified as spam calls, while two per cent of all SMSes have also been identified as spam. It has been observed that a staggering 35 per cent of the spammers have used landline telephones.
As per the finding of the company, customers in Delhi have received the maximum number of spam calls, followed by customers in Andhra Pradesh and Western Uttar Pradesh. Delhi is also where a maximum number of the spam calls have originated, followed by Mumbai and Karnataka. In terms of SMSes, the maximum number have originated in Gujarat followed by Kolkata and Uttar Pradesh and the maximum number of customers targeted have been from Mumbai, Chennai and Gujarat.
As per the trends, 76 per cent of all spam calls have been targeted at male customers. Additionally, distinct differences have been noted in terms of spam call frequency across age demographics. Customers in the age bracket of 36-60 have received 48 per cent of all spam calls, while those in the 26-35 age bracket have been the second-most targeted, accounting for 26 per cent of spam calls. Approximately only eight per cent of the spam calls have landed in the handsets of senior citizens.
The telco’s findings have also shed light on the hourly distribution of spam activity. Spam calls commence from 9 am onwards and gradually escalate in volume as the day progresses. The peak of spam activity is observed between 12 pm and 3 pm, during which the highest concentration of spam calls occur. Moreover, there is a notable disparity in the frequency of spam calls between weekdays and weekends. The volume of these calls diminishes by around 40 per cent on Sundays. Specifically, devices in the price range of Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 are the recipients of approximately 22 per cent of all spam calls.
By meticulously examining a multitude of parameters, the AI-driven system has been able to identify these unwanted intrusions in real-time with remarkable accuracy. This initiative has firmly established Airtel as the first service provider in India to offer a comprehensive solution to the growing menace of spam.
