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Bharti Airtel is reportedly in the final stages of negotiations with Google to roll out Rich Communication Services (RCS) on its network, positioning the operator to become the last of India’s major telcos to adopt the next-generation messaging platform.
The Economic Times (ET) reports that Airtel, India’s second-largest mobile operator, had previously held back from integrating RCS due to serious concerns over spam, a problem that has grown in scale and sophistication across mobile networks in the country.
But the breakthrough now appears to be a technical compromise:
Google has agreed to integrate RCS with Airtel’s AI-powered spam filter, a move insiders say finally satisfies the operator’s requirement for a secure, fraud-resistant environment before it joins the RCS ecosystem.
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With all three of India’s major players moving forward, industry stakeholders say the next major task will be ensuring full interoperability, the ability for customers of different networks to seamlessly exchange RCS messages. According to ET’s sources, this could also introduce a new interconnect usage charge specific to RCS traffic.
Airtel’s imminent entry into RCS follows a major milestone in August, when Apple inked its first RCS partnership in India with Reliance Jio, enabling the feature on iPhones for the first time through an operator collaboration.
The momentum builds on a broader global push that began in 2016, when the GSMA, Google, and several global operators launched a joint initiative to standardise RCS on Android devices.
Compared to traditional SMS or MMS, RCS packs a richer communications experience, supporting:
- High-resolution media sharing
- Real-time location updates
- Group messaging
- Payments and chatbot services
- Enhanced business messaging tools
For users, the upgrade promises a WhatsApp-like messaging layer built directly into native phone apps, without requiring additional downloads.
For operators, it opens new revenue pathways through business messaging, verification tools, and advanced customer engagement channels.
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