Vodafone says nearly all its scam calls trace back to one phone network

Australian mobile carrier Vodafone says almost all the scam calls reaching its customers over the past year came through a single phone network. It traced 98.35% of 25 million scam calls to Symbio, a wholesale voice provider owned by Aussie Broadband. Aussie Broadband says it cannot control what its customers do with the numbers they buy.

What Vodafone found

Vodafone studied scam calls received by its customers between July 2025 and July 2026. Of 25 million calls, more than 24.8 million came from Symbio's voice network. Around 160,000 of them promoted one Binance crypto scam.

The callers pretended to be banks, police, government agencies and technology companies. Vodafone says it contacted regulators more than 160 times over the past year about the misuse of its network. It also believes other phone providers see similar problems with Symbio's services.

How the scams reach you

Symbio sells phone services wholesale to more than 500 corporate clients. Those clients then resell numbers to thousands of others. That long chain makes it hard to know who is actually making a call.

Vodafone says blocking millions of calls at its end does not fix the root problem. A spokesperson said that if the bad actors were shut down closer to the source, the overwhelming majority of scam calls it sees would disappear.

Aussie Broadband's response

Aussie Broadband bought Symbio in 2023 for $262 million. It argues that Symbio resells phone numbers and cannot control how customers use them. CEO Brian Maher said that where the company finds a persistent bad actor, it will disconnect them. The Australian Communications and Media Authority, the regulator, had not responded to a request for comment when the story was published.

The bigger picture

Phone scams remain costly. This year, more than 33,300 phone scams have been reported to Scamwatch, run by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Reported losses total $61.1 million, including $36.1 million lost to investment scams. The holiday shopping season is expected to add pressure.

Australian telcos have had to block text message scams since last December. Voice scams are harder to stop, and AI voice tools and convincing deepfake calls make them easier to run in large numbers. The regulator has fined Telstra $1.5 million in 2024 for failing to protect customers from scammers.

What happens next

A new Scams Prevention Framework is due to take effect on 31 March next year. It will tighten call detection and blocking duties for telcos, financial firms and digital platforms. Vodafone hopes publishing its findings will push the industry to get better visibility into who uses phone services, even at the end of a long supply chain.

What to do

• Treat unexpected calls from a bank, police or tech company with doubt, even if your carrier blocks many calls.
• Hang up and call the organization back on a number you already trust.
• Remember that a carrier's blocking cannot catch every call.