Vodafone's parent company TPG Telecom said it analysed millions of scam calls on the Vodafone network between July 2025 and July 2026 and found that 98 per cent of them, more than 24 million calls, came via Symbio, a little-known internet phone company owned by Aussie Broadband, according to ABC News, which reported the analysis on 22 October 2026.

TPG executive Vanessa Hicks told the ABC that every time it sees such a campaign it gives the evidence to Aussie Broadband to investigate and block the bad actors, and that it wants more urgent action closer to the source.

According to the ABC, Vodafone's fraud team found that police stations in Western Australia, Queensland and South Australia and the Australian Federal Police had been impersonated by calls from Symbio's network, with over 2,400 calls in one scam in a single week in September, Hicks said.

Aussie Broadband chief executive Brian Maher told the ABC that Symbio has about 500 customers who on-sell its phone numbers, that Symbio has no oversight of who they sell numbers to, which makes stopping scammers very difficult, and that 'where we find a persistent bad actor, then we will disconnect them'; he said the company uses detection software and a team of more than 20 people, and has made 'significant progress' over the past month.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) said in a statement to the ABC that checks on that particular police-impersonation scam showed regulation was working, that the traffic was identified, notifications were passed upstream and blocking occurred, that the apparent sources were multiple overseas telcos, and that it did not identify non-compliance by an Australian telco.

The ABC reports that ACMA warned Symbio in 2024 after finding it did not properly investigate scam calls and failed to share information quickly with other telcos, and in 2022 over failing to investigate and trace scam calls.

Information Age (ACS) reported on 27 October that Vodafone's analysis of 25 million scam calls found 24.8 million (98.35 per cent) came from Symbio's voice network, and that Vodafone contacted regulators more than 160 times. Primary: ABC News; also Information Age.