India, Sept. 25 -- Airtel says its network-level AI systems have identified more than 98.4 billion spam calls and 4.4 billion spam messages, while blocking over 1.62 million malicious links, as telecom operators expand their role in detecting digital fraud.

The development comes as cyber fraud becomes more widespread and increasingly sophisticated, moving beyond conventional spam calls and phishing messages to include impersonation scams, fraudulent banking requests, malicious links, investment fraud and OTP-linked financial scams.

According to the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), Indians lost more than Rs 52,976 crore to cyber fraud over the past six years. Data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) has also record...