New Delhi, Oct. 9 -- India's top three telecom operators are leveraging custom artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, multiple datasets and outsourced security experts in a bid to take on spam callers. As remote financial scams increase in frequency, operators view the expansion of native spam detection not only as a necessity but a key feature to retain users.

Bharti Airtel, for instance, claims to have blocked over 20 billion spam calls in since September last year. Vodafone Idea said that it blocked over 600 million spam calls in the past three months. The two together account for 51% of India's 1.2-billion mobile network users as of August, per data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai).

Though late to the effort, ...