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Vodafone has alleged that over 98% of scam calls blocked on its network were associated with Aussie Broadband subsidiary Symbio. The telco says it analysed millions of scam calls between July 2025 and July 2026, and found that more than 24 million originated from Symbio.
Symbio sells digital Australian phone numbers to companies, allowing calls to be made via the internet. But rather than selling directly to consumers, Aussie Broadband says Symbio "helps other companies deliver communications services to their customers". In effect, that Symbio customers aren't responsible for the scam calls, but Symbio's customers' customers.
In a media statement released following Vodafone's allegations, Aussie Broadband said it takes its responsibility to prevent scam calls very seriously, and says it blocks tens of millions of scam calls made through Symbio each year. The company has, however, committed to "doing more", including undertaking a scam call review of Symbio customers, investing in additional technology to enhance scam monitoring, and establishing a scam portal to record scam tracing activity.
A Vodafone spokesperson said the telco had raised the issue with Aussie Broadband over 160 times, and is now making it public so that "Aussie does more to cut off scammers".
"We spend millions of dollars every year protecting customers and have specialist teams working to identify and block this traffic as it hits our network," said the Vodafone spokeserson. "Blocking millions of calls at our end doesn't fix the underlying problem."
"Australians shouldn't have to wait for a scammer pretending to be the police or their bank to reach their phone before somebody acts. Aussie Broadband and Symbio need to know who is using their services, act on repeated warnings and shut down bad actors when they find them."
Alex Choros
