Vodafone says 24 million scam calls reached its customers through one Australian carrier

By Jiali Hong- “Student journalists at the University of Melbourne”

Vodafone says 98 per cent of the scam calls that reached its customers over the past year, more than 24 million of them, came through a single Australian carrier. The company, owned by TPG Telecom, analysed scam calls on its network between July 2025 and July 2026 and found almost all of them arrived via Symbio, an internet phone company owned by Aussie Broadband. Vodafone’s fraud team traced a scam in which callers impersonated police to Symbio’s network, counting more than 2,400 such calls in a single week in September.

What each company says

TPG Telecom executive Vanessa Hicks said the problem needed to be stopped earlier in the chain. “We want more urgent action to stop this activity closer to the source,” Ms Hicks said.

She said TPG could not simply “turn off another telco”, because deciding whether a call is legitimate has to happen in milliseconds. TPG denied its criticism was driven by commercial rivalry. Aussie Broadband chief executive Brian Maher said the company acted when it identified repeat offenders.

“Where we find a persistent bad actor, then we will disconnect them,” Mr Maher said.

Mr Maher said Symbio had about 500 customers reselling phone numbers, with no oversight of who those resellers sold to, which made stopping scammers difficult. He said the company used detection software and a team of more than 20 people, and had made significant progress over the past month. He also said Aussie Broadband was the largest wholesaler in the market, so it would account for a higher share of scam calls. Optus said no single carrier consistently accounted for most scam calls. Telstra declined to provide carrier-specific figures, as did Optus.

What the regulator says

The Australian Communications and Media Authority said its checks on the police-impersonation scam showed the regulations were working, because the traffic was identified, reported upstream and blocked. It said the apparent sources were multiple overseas telcos, and that it did not identify non-compliance by an Australian telco. ACMA warned Symbio in 2024 for failing to properly investigate scam calls or share information quickly with other telcos, and said it would not hesitate to take stronger action if non-compliance recurred. Symbio was also warned in 2022 over failing to investigate and trace scam calls. Ms Hicks said it was disappointing that Symbio had faced no financial penalties.

What changes next year

The Scams Prevention Framework comes into full effect next year and is expected to impose new obligations on telcos, including on preventing scams that use Australian phone numbers. Companies that fail to meet them could be required to compensate customers and face penalties of up to $11 million. Telcos have blocked more than 3.12 billion scam calls since December 2020 and 1.11 billion scam texts since July 2022, according to ACMA.

The police-impersonation scam

Cybercrime investigator Dan Halpin separately examined 8,000 numbers reported by the public and found Symbio was the carrier most often linked to suspect numbers, ahead of Telstra. In one case reported to the ABC, Perth resident Ian Odlum received a call from someone claiming to be police who demanded he travel to a police station. Mr Odlum refused and the caller hung up. Australian police do not demand that people attend a station, pay money or transfer funds over the phone. Scam calls can be reported to Scamwatch at scamwatch.gov.au.

Sources

• • ABC News, 22 October 2026
  • Australian Communications and Media Authority, scam call blocking data