Good morning. Good morning, and welcome to Telstra's first half financial year 2022 results presentation. My name is Nathan Burley, Head of Investor Relations. I respectfully acknowledge that I'm joining today from the lands of the Kulin nation. On behalf of Telstra, I would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia, and recognize their continued connection to land, waters, and culture. We pay our respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. This morning, after presentations from our CEO, Andy Penn, and CFO, Vicki Brady, we'll be taking questions from analysts and investors, and then media. I will now hand over to Andy Penn. Andy.
Well, thank you very much, Nathan, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to Telstra's results announcement for the half year ending the thirty-first of December 2021. It's a half in which we saw our underlying business continue to grow. A half in which we also saw the benefits of our T22 strategy flowing through for our customers and for our shareholders. A half in which we announced the transition to T25, a strategy for growth. A strategy that leverages the foundation and capabilities that we have built through T22. Now, we believe that we have achieved these results because we have stayed very disciplined and focused on delivering what we said we would. Our T22 strategy has been a clear success. We are now a vastly different company, and we are determined to finish the job.
As the nation has developed an ever-increasing reliance on digital connectivity, particularly over the last two or three years as we've navigated our way through COVID, we are very well-placed to deliver the infrastructure, the solutions, and the security needed by our customers, and to support Australia's aspiration to become a world-leading digital economy by 2030. This morning, I will make some introductory remarks and take you through an overview of our results. Vicki will then take you through the numbers in detail before we move to Q&A. Can I say, though, thank you all for attending today, albeit virtually, and hopefully we will get the chance to catch up face-to-face soon. With that, let me turn to the results.
FY 2022 is a pivotal year for Telstra financially, as we see the near final negative transitional effects of the NBN in our reported results, but with the growing momentum in our underlying performance starting to show through. For example, our reported total income includes declines of around AUD 450 million in one-off NBN receipts and AUD 200 million in NBN commercial works. While, on the other hand, our underlying results demonstrate the benefits of our T22 strategy. Total income for the half, therefore, decreased 9.4% to AUD 10.9 billion on a reported basis. Net PAT decreased 34% to AUD 0.7 billion. Earnings per share was down 35.9% to AUD 0.059 per share, also both on a reported basis.
In addition to the impact of the NBN, the declines on a reported basis also reflect the one-off gains last year from the sale of our Velocity and South Brisbane Exchange fibre assets, and the sale and leaseback of our Pitt Street exchange. In contrast, though, to our reported results, underlying EBITDA on a guidance basis increased 5.1% to AUD 3.5 billion. This was the second consecutive half of underlying EBITDA growth. Underlying EBITDA included an NBN headwind in the year of AUD 190 million, which was down on last year, and which will, of course, be less again in the second half. Underlying EPS was up 55% to AUD 0.062 per share, a very strong start against our T25 ambition of underlying EPS CAGR in the high teens from FY 2021 to FY 2025.
The board has resolved to pay a fully franked dividend, interim dividend of AUD 0.08 per share, returning around AUD 940 million to shareholders. While this is the same level of the total interim dividend as last year, it's worth noting that it includes an increase in the ordinary dividend component from AUD 0.05 - AUD 0.06 per share. Also, by the end of December, we were more than 40% of the way through our AUD 1.35 billion on-market share buyback. We expect to complete the buyback by the end of the current financial year. I will now turn to some of the operating highlights for the half. We continue to see good customer growth in mobiles, despite the impact of COVID on population growth and our retail presence.
We added 84,000 net retail post-paid mobile services, including 62,000 branded, with a strong contribution from Enterprise. Our branded performance reinforces the benefits of our clear leadership in 5G. In wholesale, we added 91,000 services, and we added another 452,000 IoT services. Our continued focus on mobile leadership and building value resulted in a 5% post-paid handheld ARPU growth, 6.3% mobile services revenue growth, and AUD 392 million mobile EBITDA growth. Our performance in fixed for consumer and small business customers has been more challenged, particularly as we are now at the end of the migration to the NBN and dealing with some of the most difficult cases. Net new retail bundles were -50,000, although bundle and standalone data ARPU increased 0.5%.
Notwithstanding the disappointing CIO performance, we are confident of restoring momentum by leveraging the benefit of the many value-added home broadband features that Telstra offers. These include the Telstra Smart Modem, Telstra TV, the Telstra Wi-Fi Guarantee, and of course, our new 5G fixed wireless offer. Also earlier this month, Foxtel reported a 19% increase in paid streaming subscribers to more than 3.9 million compared to last year. This strong subscriber growth positions Foxtel, and of course our investment in Foxtel, very well for the future, as well as providing great entertainment experiences for our customers. In Enterprise and in line with our previously communicated aspiration, we return to income and EBITDA growth, and we are on track to deliver growth for the full year. Growth in the half was achieved across mobile, international, and NAS.
NAS income and EBITDA grew in the half by 2.4% and 67% respectively, and Vicki will talk a bit more about that later. We also recently signed a major contract with the Department of Defence. InfraCo fixed income was also up 1.5% for the half to AUD 1.2 billion excluding commercial works. Telstra Health also had a strong half, both strategically and operationally. Revenue was up 9% or if you include the acquisitions of MedicalDirector and PowerHealth, up 37%. Confirming our continued improvements in customer experience, Episode NPS improved 11 points in the last 12 months and five points in the last six. Strategic NPS declined two points in the last 12 months and four points in the last six, although remains up 13 points since the launch of T22.
Finally, on our operating highlights, we have made very strong progress in our productivity program. For the half, underlying fixed costs were down AUD 254 million, and total operating expenses were down AUD 644 million or 8%. We're on track to deliver a reduction in our underlying fixed costs of approximately AUD 430 million for the full year. It is clear we have financial momentum. In fact, if you look at the left-hand side of this slide, it shows the growth that we have achieved in underlying EBITDA in the last three halves, including the 3.5 billion delivered this half. Against this, our guidance for the full year is AUD 7 billion-AUD 7.3 billion, which indicates growth again in the second half.
The chart on the right-hand side of this slide shows the evolution of our full-year underlying EBITDA, including our aspiration to be in the range of AUD 7.5 billion-AUD 8 billion in FY 2023, and our T25 ambition for mid-single-digit CAGR out to 2025. These statements for FY 2023 and FY 2025 are not guidance. They are aspirations and ambitions, which means that they are subject to greater risks and uncertainties associated with them compared to our normal guidance statements. Nonetheless, though, the chart clearly demonstrates our ongoing financial momentum and our ambition for further growth. With that, let me turn back to our progress with T22. We have completed, or we are on track to deliver over 80% of our T22 scorecard metrics as we enter the final six months.
I will highlight today just a few of our many T22 achievements, but at the full year, I will provide a comprehensive review as we close out the program. Since announcing T22, we have radically simplified our business, reducing the number of consumer and small business plans from 1,800 to 20. We now have more than 9.4 million services on those plans. We have removed lock-in contracts. We've removed excess data charges and many other fees. We have 4 million customers signed up to our rewards program, Telstra Plus, and we are seeing strong engagement with NPS for customers who are members of Telstra Plus around 20 points higher than the customers who are not. For consumer and small business customers, digital sales interactions were up 11 percentage points in the half to 50%.
In fact, overall, almost three-quarters of all service interactions with Consumer and Small Business customers are now digital. The number of calls coming into our Consumer and Small Business contact centers has fallen by 70%. That's 70%. By the end of this financial year, we expect to answer all of these calls in Australia. We're also well progressed on the arrangements to bring our licensee stores back in-house. By the end of December, we had insourced almost half of the 166 branded stores previously run by independent licensees. We've also completed the acquisition of Vita, bringing another 104 stores back in-house. In Enterprise, we have rationalized the number of active products by more than half, and our adaptive networks and adaptive mobility products are providing more flexibility to our customers.
Similar to our digitization progress in Consumer and Small Business, more than a third of all Enterprise service interactions are now through the digital channel. On ways of working, we have further progressed our journey to introduce Agile, and today we have around 17,000 people working in Agile at a high level of maturity. Excluding hires due to COVID workforce restrictions, we have met our T22 target to reduce our direct workforce by 8,000 net. Overall, in fact, we have reduced our direct and indirect head count by one-third or 27,000 in response to the transfer of a material part of our business to the NBN and from our digitization and efficiency initiatives.
At the same time, we have exceeded our target to recruit new capabilities in new areas such as software engineering, data analytics, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence with more than 1,500 new hires to date. We have delivered cost reductions of AUD 2.5 billion, and we are on track to deliver our T22 productivity target of AUD 2.7 billion. We've monetized over AUD 2 billion worth of assets, further strengthening our balance sheet, and this is in addition to the sale of a 49% stake on a non-controlling basis in our towers business for AUD 2.8 billion, which was finalized this half. In network leadership, our 5G network is now more than twice the size of our next nearest competitor, and we cover more than 77.5% of the population with 2.8 million 5G devices already connected.
Not surprisingly, therefore, we also continue to lead the market in the major mobile industry performance benchmarks in the year, including umlaut, where we were ranked number one for Best in Test and Best in Data. umlaut's 5G audit also showed that Telstra had by far the widest 5G availability in each of the eight tested cities. We've also just been awarded Australia's fastest mobile network by Ookla. The Ookla Speedtest Award found that we were faster nationally and faster on both median download and median upload speeds in the three largest Australian cities being Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Our spectrum holdings are crucial to our ongoing leadership.
I'm therefore pleased to report we secured the maximum possible low-band spectrum at the December auction, and we will now be using our 900 spectrum to support our 3G network with more capacity for regional and rural customers ahead of retiring 3G in FY 2024. Together with our existing spectrum holdings, we continue to hold more low-band spectrum than any other carrier, which is important given our larger customer base. On infrastructure, the business has been operating for some time now as a standalone business unit under the leadership of Brendon Riley. We are also well progressed on our legal restructure, and you will have noted the introduction into parliament in late November of last year of changes to legislation which are consistent with this.
There are a couple of steps that we still need to conclude, and we anticipate announcing the details of the scheme process that we will be going through by the end of this quarter. Turning to our T22 scorecard. In the half, we completed our ambition to have more than 45% of Consumer and Small Business sales transactions through the digital channel. That therefore brings the total number of completed measures for T22- 25. With less than six months to go, we're on track to complete another 10. This includes two new measures that have been added in the half being to achieve 40% of Enterprise service interactions through the digital channel by FY 2022, and for all Consumer and Small Business incoming calls to be answered in Australia. As I have previously reported, there are some measures that are rated amber or red.
However, there have been no significant changes to these ratings for the full year. I will only make a couple of comments. Firstly, on underlying ROIC, our target is to achieve around 8% in FY 2023, and this is consistent with the financial ambitions I spoke to earlier. Secondly, our employee engagement increased to 80% by the end of December and has improved further since then. We are on track to achieve our target of a 10-point improvement by the end of this year, placing us amongst the top-performing companies globally. In terms of finishing the job on T22 over the next few months, our key focus is on, firstly, completing the group restructure to drive value from InfraCo and create optionality while preserving Telstra's core differentiation.
Further improving customer experience, including completion of bringing our stores in-house and our consumer and small business call centers onshore. Further consolidating our position as Australia's largest 5G network with 80% population coverage. Restoring financial momentum to Telstra Enterprise by building on the first half results and delivering overall revenue and EBITDA growth. Starting to scale our energy business and delivering high teens growth in health revenues before acquisitions. Ceasing sale and new development on the old technology stack while migrating at scale to the new one. Continuing to deliver operating momentum including in mobile sales, Telstra Plus, media services, and turning around the performance in our fixed consumer and small business business. Delivering our AUD 2.7 billion annualized productivity target. Finally, delivering on new ways of working, including leading employee engagement and being at full scale with Agile.
With that, let me turn briefly to T25. As you know, like T22, T25 is built around four key strategic pillars. Firstly, to provide an exceptional customer experience you can count on. Nothing is more important than continuing to improve customer experience, and this sits at the very heart of T25. The second pillar is to provide the leading network and technology solutions that deliver your future. The third pillar is to create sustained growth and value for our shareholders. The fourth and final pillar is to be the place you want to work. T25 is a strategy that is focused on growth by leveraging the capabilities that we have built under T22. In the same way that T22 would not have been possible without the foundational investments that we announced in 2016, T25 would not be possible without all that we have accomplished in T22.
That is why we are so committed and so focused on finishing the job on T22. We will deliver T25 through our five key businesses: Consumer and Small Business, Enterprise, New Markets, which comprises Energy and Health, International and Infrastructure. The four pillars of T25 are guiding the strategy for each of these businesses, but each has its own ambition reflecting the place it is at and its opportunities ahead. Of course, in its implementation, we will be using exactly the same disciplines and governance that we use for T22, including a T25 Scorecard that lays out the key milestones and metrics that underpin the strategic pillars. This scorecard shows how we plan to keep track of our progress and how we will hold ourselves to account to you.
It's ambitious in its breadth and its depth, and like T22, while we may not hit every single measure 100%, I would rather be bold and clear about our aspirations and be transparent with you about the progress that we are making. We will update the scorecard at every results presentation starting next financial year. In the meantime, we have already made some good progress. The recent TIO quarterly complaints report showed that our complaint numbers fell 50% in the last quarter compared to the same quarter last year. Earlier this month, we, of course, announced two major telecommunications infrastructure projects to support the nation's digital economy and enable unprecedented levels of connectivity right the way across Australia.
That includes building and managing the ground infrastructure and fiber network in Australia for Viasat's new ViaSat-3 satellite system and a major new fiber project to build state-of-the-art intercity dual fiber paths right the way across the country. In fact, we've updated our T25 scorecard for the new fiber build to 20,000 km accordingly. Last month, Telstra Health was re-selected to deliver 1800RESPECT for initial five years at an estimated contract value of around AUD 200 million. This adds to the recent strategic health software company acquisitions in GP practice management and specialist billing and clinical coding. We also announced earlier this week the appointment of Elizabeth Koff as the new CEO of Telstra Health. Elizabeth, of course, is the current Secretary of the New South Wales Department of Health and has been responsible for navigating the state's health system through COVID very successfully.
While Mary Foley will be staying with us on the board of Telstra Health and in an advisory capacity following her retirement in June, I did wanna take a moment to acknowledge and thank Mary for her outstanding leadership over the last 5 years. She has truly transformed the health business and placed it in an excellent position for growth. On energy, we received the final license approvals for Victoria in December. This adds to earlier licenses in Queensland, New South Wales, and South Australia, and we are now therefore trialing the product with our first customers. Earlier this month, we announced an AUD 100 million deal with Intellihub to provide up to 4.1 million IoT SIMs over the next decade. It's our largest-ever IoT deal in terms of value and number of devices.
The IoT SIMs will help deliver real-time monitoring and insights to help Intellihub and its customers better manage their energy demands, so it shows exactly the sort of opportunity for us as a provider of energy and broadband and IoT services together. In November, we announced our joint venture to form a new joint venture with Quantium to bring together Quantium's market-leading data science and AI capabilities with our customer product and network assets. This unique partnership is a key enabler for our T25 data and AI ambitions. We're also bringing to life the many ambitious goals we have set ourselves to be a leading, responsible, and sustainable business. In December, we announced that we will be broadening our existing greenhouse gas emission reduction targets to include a 50% reduction in Scope 3 emissions by 2030 from our FY 2019 baseline.
Our Scope 3 emissions are three times greater than our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions added together. You can see this is a very significant commitment. Finally, while strictly not contemplated in our T25 strategy, in October last year, we announced the acquisition in partnership with the Australian Government of Digicel Pacific, adding 2.5 million customers and leading mobile businesses in PNG, Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, Nauru, and Samoa to our international business. We're currently working through the final stages of the regulatory process for the acquisition and anticipate that that will be completed by the end of this quarter. In summary, while we have not yet transitioned fully to T25, we are putting in place the initiatives that will fuel our growth in the future. With that, let me close.
The transformation of Telstra and our turnaround has continued, and we are well-positioned for growth. We have stayed disciplined on the execution of T22, and our hard work is paying off. The benefits are flowing through for our customers and for our shareholders. We're delivering a better customer experience, we have removed many pain points, and we have raised the bar on doing business responsibly. Our mobile network remains Australia's biggest and best. Agile is transforming how we work, and combined with our hybrid working model, it is also helping our people to feel supported and perform at their best. Our T22 program has been a clear success, and we are determined to finish the job and complete the transition to T25. I would like to close by acknowledging that we have made the progress that we have because of the combined efforts and then of the many dedicated Telstra employees.
Despite the disruptions and the impact of them personally from COVID, every single day, they have focused on working for our customers and keeping Australians connected, and for that, I want to sincerely thank them. Thank you. With that, I will now hand over to Vicki before we open for Q&A.
Thanks, Andy. This morning I'm delighted to provide details of our first half 2022 results, which demonstrate the disciplined execution of our T22 strategy translating into ongoing financial momentum and underlying growth. These results do, however, show declines on a reported basis due to the negative effect of transitioning customers to the NBN and one-off gains on sale of assets in the prior comparative period. I will now take you through the results, starting with our first half 2022 income statement and financial highlights on slide 13. The left-hand side shows our reported results for first half 2022. Income was AUD 10.9 billion, down 9%. EBIT was AUD 1.3 billion, down 22%. Net finance costs declined due to a reduction in both net debt and lower average borrowing costs. Tax increased 42%.
The effective tax rate of 28.5% in this half compared to only 16% in the prior corresponding period, with capital losses offsetting the profit on asset sales. Reported NPAT declined 34% to AUD 0.7 billion. This decline was due to a number of one-offs in the PCP. The right-hand side of the slide shows our underlying results. These underlying results exclude NBN one-offs, which on an EBITDA basis declined AUD 395 million as the NBN migration completes. They also exclude restructuring and guidance adjustments, which reduced AUD 267 million, largely due to gains on sale of assets in first half 2021. Underlying is the basis on which we provide EBITDA guidance. Underlying income declined 4%. This included in-year NBN headwinds and the roll-off of NBN commercial works. Low margin mobile hardware revenue also declined.
This included the impacts of supply constraints. Underlying EBITDA was AUD 3.5 billion, up 5.1%. This included absorbing an estimated AUD 190 million of in-year NBN headwind, further illustrating the strong financial performance of the underlying business. Depreciation and amortization declined 5.5% due to several assets fully depreciating in first half 2021. Our FY 2022 D&A outlook for an around AUD 100 million reduction is unchanged. This excludes any potential lease exits as we right-size our property portfolio. From FY 2022, we expect D&A to be broadly flat. Underlying EPS grew 55% to AUD 0.062 per share. The board has resolved to pay an interim dividend of AUD 0.08 per share, fully franked, including a AUD 0.06 ordinary and AUD 0.02 special.
The interim dividend represents a 136% earnings payout ratio, or a 67% payout of free cash flow. In first half 2022, we have continued our financial growth trajectory. Slide 14 shows the trend in our underlying EBITDA by half. Looking sequentially, the blue arrows show that we have gone from AUD 41 million growth in the second half of FY 2021 to growth of AUD 130 million in first half of FY 2022. This momentum is a result of improved product trajectory, especially in mobile, ongoing productivity and slowing drag from fixed and NBN headwinds. Today, we reaffirm FY 2022 guidance and therefore expect further sequential growth of underlying EBITDA of up to AUD 300 million in the second half. Now looking at EBITDA growth in more detail by product on slide 15. These products represent the new categories we announced in January.
These changes result in more transparency across our infrastructure business, with InfraCo Fixed and Amplitel, our towers business, shown on a standalone basis. Our mobile and fixed products are shown including internal infrastructure costs. Mobile continued its momentum and was the key contributor to first half growth. We see execution of our T22 strategy to simplify our plans flowing through to the bottom line, along with successful monetization of 5G leadership. Mobile EBITDA grew AUD 392 million, driven by service revenue growth, transitioning our customers off subsidy and lease plans, and ongoing productivity. Mobile growth was partly offset by declines across our domestic fixed portfolio, albeit the decline reduced versus FY 2021. International contributed positively, with InfraCo Fixed declining AUD 100 million due to the run-off of NBN commercial works. InfraCo Fixed EBITDA grew, excluding commercial works.
Other EBITDA declined AUD 24 million due to a range of corporate adjustments. I will now take you through the key products. Firstly, looking at mobile, with four charts shown on slide 16. On the top left, you can see mobile service revenue, which is the key long-term driver of mobile profitability. First half service revenue grew 6.3%. Pleasingly, this growth was across the board, with all segments and product service revenue lines growing, including postpaid, prepaid, mobile broadband, wholesale, and IoT. The biggest category and contributor to growth was postpaid handheld. We added 84,000 postpaid handheld customers with SIO growth in all segments, including a strong contribution from Enterprise. Postpaid handheld revenue growth was largely due to ARPU, which can be seen on the bottom left chart.
It grew 5%, with all brands and segments in growth as we monetize 5G and our network leadership. Reported growth is despite around AUD 1.50 negative impact from accounting changes, including a shift from gross revenue recognition to net margin recognition for some add-ons. These changes are noneconomic, illustrated by the strength of our mobile EBITDA. First half 2022 ARPU has now largely captured the full benefits of the pricing and associated AUD 5 transacting minimum monthly commitment lift from FY 2019- 2021. However, our momentum continues and our lead indicator of postpaid handheld ARPU, TMMC, grew a further AUD 2 in first half 2022 versus PCP or AUD 1 sequentially. We expect this to flow through to ARPU in second half 2022. However, it will be offset by further noneconomic accounting impacts.
The return of international roaming, to the extent it does return, will also benefit future ARPU. We now have 82% of our mass market customers on in-market plans. These plans provide customers with more simplicity, transparency, and certainty, including ensuring everyone is on the latest plan. Like any business, we have inflation pressures, and our in-market plans can accommodate price changes simply. This would be similar to the approach taken by some international telcos and other industries here in Australia. We remain confident postpaid handheld, in addition to other mobile revenue lines, can contribute to our ambition for a mid-single-digit mobile service revenue CAGR to FY 2025. In the chart on the bottom right, you can see that prepaid handheld performance was strong, with revenue growth of 6.9% due to a 67,000 increase in unique users and higher ARPU.
Our prepaid business has moved to the new digital stack, and we are seeing a higher proportion of customers using auto-recharge through the My Telstra app, giving us more confidence in the quality and stability of this revenue. Finally, top right, you can see mobile EBITDA percentage margin, which grew from 33.2% in first half 2021 to 41.8% in first half 2022. This illustrates the operating leverage we have in mobile as we grow high-margin service revenue and continue to achieve reductions in fixed costs through productivity. The margin increase has now captured the full benefits of transitioning off subsidy and lease plans. Revenue mix also supported the percentage margin increase, including a lesser amount of lower margin hardware and interconnect revenue. Turning to infrastructure on slide 17.
We have a world-class set of fixed infrastructure assets across fiber, ducts, and fixed network sites, with over AUD 2 billion of annualized infrastructure access revenues. One of the pillars of T 22 has been to set ourselves up to better realize the value of these assets. Recurring revenue from NBN for the use of InfraCo Fixed assets is shown on the top right chart. It grew 2%. These revenues are indexed to CPI for the remaining average contracted period of 26 years. InfraCo Fixed also includes NBN commercial works revenue, which is rolling off as NBN rollout nears completion and contracts end. Other commercial and recoverable works also declined, impacted by a slowdown in relevant construction. InfraCo Fixed revenue, excluding commercial works, is shown on the top left chart. On this basis, both InfraCo Fixed revenue and EBITDA grew.
We remain confident in the outlook for InfraCo Fixed, with demand supporting our T25 ambition for low single-digit EBITDA growth. With additional long-term growth from the strategic infrastructure investments associated with the two major projects we announced in early February. Turning to Fixed Enterprise on slide 18. Overall, the decline in Fixed Enterprise moderated as SIOs growth partially offset the data and connectivity decline. Data and connectivity revenue declined 12%. T-Fibre SIOs were flat sequentially as we successfully re-signed key customers. For example, we now have contracts to supply high bandwidth fiber and broadband to almost every public school in the country, and recently signed major contracts with the Department of Defence and Viasat. However, overall SIOs declined, driven by lower value copper and legacy connections, which were impacted by consolidation and NBN migration.
ARPU compression continued due to the NBN's rollout of business fiber zones and technology change. As a result, data and connectivity revenue decline is not expected to slow in FY 2022. Despite ongoing disruption, we continue to target growth from the portfolio by FY 2024 by navigating through price compression and returning to CIO growth as we leverage our extensive fiber footprint complemented by reselling NBN. In NAS, income and EBITDA grew 2.4% and 67%, respectively. Cloud, professional and managed services, including security and IoT, all grew consistent with our strategy. This was partly offset by legacy decline. Although it was pleasing to see NAS return to growth, we continue to target higher levels of income growth in this business. EBITDA also benefited from productivity. NAS margin was 8% in first half 2022 or 11% before our restatements to include internal infrastructure charges.
We have always believed mid-teens margins are required to ensure appropriate returns from this business, and this remains our ambition. We expect to achieve around 13% in FY 2022, pre the internal infrastructure charges. By FY 2025, on this new basis, our ambition is to reach mid-teens. The bottom right chart shows total enterprise revenue and EBITDA. Slowing Fixed Enterprise decline, international growth, shown on the bottom right chart, and especially strong mobile growth, contributed to enterprise delivering overall revenue and EBITDA growth. This was in line with our commitment to achieve enterprise growth in FY 2022. Finally, turning to Fixed CNSB and Active Wholesale. In Fixed CNSB, revenue and EBITDA declines reflect CIO losses and tail end of NBN migrations and legacy declines. We are, however, confident that EBITDA has now reached the bottom. Our confidence in achieving growth is due to four key factors.
First, the NBN migration is now substantially complete, which reduces the future economic headwinds and drag on SIOs. Second, we see further ARPU momentum. ARPU grew in the half on plan mix, despite the benefit of price rises being credited until second half 2022. TMMC is currently accretive to ARPU, and we expect to continue to lift the 9% of NBN customers on 100 Mbps plans and higher. Third are the benefits from migrating to the new digital stack. As migration progresses, we are seeing similar customer and financial benefits that were achieved in mobile now flowing through to Fixed, with the NPS for customers on the new digital stack 20 points higher and lower cost to connect. Finally, ongoing productivity will also benefit Fixed C&SB. These factors also support off-net margin expansion.
Our first half 2022 off-net EBITDA margin was 4%, a small decline sequentially, which includes higher NBN CVC overage costs and investment in customer experience. We stand by our NBN reseller mid-teens EBITDA margin ambition. However, we now expect to achieve this in FY 2025 rather than FY 2023. This right shift reflects the slower realization of digitization benefits, including from disruption on our workforce due to COVID-19 and our trading performance. Our ambition for FY 2023 is to more than double EBITDA margin from the 4% reported this half. We are confident of achieving this and our mid-teens ambition by FY 2025 as we deliver on the key items I've just spoken to. Our fixed C&SB outlook longer run is also supported by 5G home internet, where there is strong demand and opportunity. We see capex accelerating in second half and getting to scale in FY 2023.
Turning to fixed active wholesale, which is a much smaller portfolio following our restatements, with commercial works and facilities access moving into InfraCo. As a result, our prior outlook for fixed wholesale therefore no longer applies. The EBITDA decline was largely due to the tail end of NBN headwinds, legacy product declines, and similar trends in data and connectivity to enterprise. Further declines are expected until legacy and NBN impacts roll off and before data and connectivity stabilizes. Turning to our operating expenses, which you can see on slide 20. We are pleased to have achieved further cost reductions in first half 2022. Total costs declined 8% and underlying fixed costs declined 8.9%. An increase in NBN payments was more than offset by decline in other sales costs, including lower hardware costs.
Underlying fixed costs reduced by AUD 254 million, enabled by our T22 drive to digitize and simplify our processes, as well as our move to a more Agile workforce. Migration of customers to the NBN, along with our focus on rationalizing vendors and services, has also contributed to the cost reduction. This means that since FY 2016, we have delivered AUD 2.5 billion of cumulative annual recurring cost reductions, and we are confident of delivering our AUD 2.7 billion target in FY 2022. Under T25, our ambition is to deliver a further AUD 500 million of net fixed cost reduction from FY 2023 to FY 2025 while investing for growth. Turning to free cash flow, which you can see on slide 21. We continued the strong conversion of EBITDA to cash, with cash running significantly above accounting earnings.
This is partly due to structurally lower BAU CapEx than adjusted D&A by approximately AUD 600 million per annum, or approximately AUD 250 million per annum in FY 2023 to FY 2025 after an additional AUD 350 million per annum from the strategic infrastructure investments announced a couple of weeks ago. Free cash flow after lease payments declined with lower reported EBITDA due to one-offs, partially offset by working capital improvements. Working capital improvements in first half 2022 were largely due to reduced receivables, including from lower handset sales and stronger collections. Consistent with our historical split, we expect FY 2022 cash flow to be weighted to the second half. In first half 2022, M&A adjustments included AUD 428 million related to the acquisitions of MedicalDirector and PowerHealth, and AUD 183 million from insourcing retail stores.
In financing cash flow, we also received AUD 2.9 billion or AUD 2.8 billion net of costs from the sale of the 49% stake in Amplitel. At the end of first half 2022, we were AUD 571 million of the way through our planned up to AUD 1.3 billion buyback, using part of the proceeds from the towers transaction. Turning to our capital position on slide 22, we reduced net debt by AUD 2.1 billion in first half 2022, supported by our strong free cash flow and proceeds from the partial sale of our towers business. We remain within our comfort ranges for all our credit metrics with debt servicing at 1.9x . This provides us significant flexibility ahead of the Digicel acquisition closing, completing our buyback and announced strategic infrastructure investments.
Underlying ROIC improved from 4.5% in 1H 2021 to 6.2% in 1H 2022, with momentum from executing our T22 strategy, delivering progress towards our FY 2023 target of approximately 8%. Turning now to FY 2022 guidance, which is unchanged. You can see the ranges along with the assumptions and conditions upon which we have provided them on slide 23. To summarize, our results clearly demonstrate our financial momentum and strong underlying growth. We have confidence this momentum will continue, driven by product growth, delivery of productivity, and diversifying our growth, including in infrastructure, health, energy, and through the Digicel acquisition. This will also support delivery of our financial ambitions under T25. We continue to have strong cash generation, a strong balance sheet, and we'll stay disciplined and focused on creating shareholder value.
I remain excited by the future and the opportunities in front of us. Finally, I would like to thank and recognize our dedicated teams right across Telstra, and I will now hand over to Nathan to take us through Q&A.
Thank you. Thank you, Vicki. We'll now start a time of Q&A, beginning with investors and analysts. On the call, in addition to Andy and Vicki, are Michael Ackland, Group Executive, Consumer & Small Business, David Burns, Group Executive, Enterprise, and Brendon Riley, CEO, InfraCo. We'll now take our first question. The first question is from Eric Choi from Barrenjoey. Go ahead, Eric.
Morning, guys. Thank you. A few for me. Just the first one on mobile, and I wanted to pick up on your comment with regards to accommodating inflation with your in-market plans. I guess the question is, are you. I'm just looking at your post-paid ARPU growth, and it's growing sequentially, and it's obviously outperforming your peers who are sort of seeing their post-paid ARPUs more flat sequentially. I guess obviously you guys are benefiting from your back book pricing changes, and they aren't. I guess the question is, are you happy with your pricing premium versus peers so you can sort of pull that CPI price lever? Should I continue with the second and third, Nathan, or stop there?
Yeah, let's keep going, Eric.
Okay. Second one, just on international subs. I guess the industry feedback is the headwinds from exiting international SIMs subsided this half. So I'm just wondering if that benefited your post-paid net adds at all. You know, previously you guys have called out a AUD 200 million roaming drag. Just wondering what the drag from your loss of international subs was. Then just the last one, a bit more of an open-ended one that maybe you guys can take on notice. Just looking at Europe and sort of people looking at the valuations of NetCos versus ServeCos and the propensity of people to value NetCos and punish CapEx in NetCos less.
Just wondering if you can start splitting some of these 2023 and 2025 targets between InfraCo and remaining Telstra, just to help us with, I guess, our valuations and how we think about the different free cash flows. Thanks.
Hey, Eric. It's Andy. Thank you very much for that, those questions and for your ongoing interest as always. I'll make a couple of comments, and then I'll maybe hand over to Vicki and Michael Ackland. On the last point, just on the question around can we basically split out CapEx and the financials from the infrastructure side of the business compared to the ServeCo side of the business. That is something that I think we are gradually doing. I mean, the whole product restatement was part of that this year in the process we're going through to set up InfraCo as a standalone business unit first and now putting in place the actual legal structures around it.
I do think that, you know, once we get through all of that, it will be worthwhile us spending time, you know, engaging with the market to really understand what's the best way and what's the most helpful way to present some of those, financials. We will take that on notice, and we will reflect on it because we appreciate it is important and as you say, people are thinking about those two things differently. I think our investment that we announced the other day in, you know, some long-term big infrastructure projects is consistent with that. On the, mobile pricing points and, international subs. Look, on mobile pricing, obviously, you know, we're not in a position to talk about what our plans.
It wouldn't be right for us to talk about what our plans are, et cetera, on pricing. As you pointed out, I hope people sort of fully appreciate this, but maybe I'll sort of tease it out a bit because when we launched T22 and we went from 1,800 products to 20, one of the key philosophical things behind that was that we wanted to move to a world where we didn't have a back book. Because in lots of industries, including telecommunications, what tends to happen is when companies update features or update prices, they do so on the plans for customers that might buy them tomorrow. They don't necessarily flow the benefit of that back to customers who bought plans previously.
They issue it as a new plan, and that's why you end up, candidly, with 1,800 plans. That's a bad customer experience. It's administratively expensive to manage. That's the commitment that we made. We went to 20 simplified plans. We now have nearly 10 million, I think it's 9.4 million customers on those plans. The benefit of that is all of those customers get the benefit of everything that we do to enhance them as we do it. As a consequence, because we've made price changes, they flow through immediately, which means it's a lot simpler for customers, it's a lot easier to understand. Obviously, if we make price increases or changes in the future, whether they're inflation driven or otherwise, we'll have the benefit of that.
That's why we get the flow through. Well, look, with those comments made, I might hand over to Vicki and Michael to see if there's anything else you wanted to add. Particularly also, I haven't touched on the international subs point, that Eric raised as well. Vicki or Michael.
Yeah. Thanks, Andy. Why don't I make a couple of comments, and then Michael can jump in. Eric, just in terms of postpaid handheld ARPU, we're obviously pleased with where it's at, and you can see that momentum as I spoke about. We've now largely captured those pricing benefits from the TMMC uplift through FY 2019- 2021, that AUD 5 uplift. And as I said, we would expect, as we look at the second half, there is continued momentum. However, those accounting changes will largely offset that. That's playing out. In terms of the impact on our business from international people not coming in to the country, we've obviously highlighted the AUD 200 million of international roaming as the biggest impact, and it is undoubtedly the most significant impact.
Of course, we've seen population growth decline, and so that has had an impact on us as it has on our competitors in the market and the industry overall. But we haven't drawn it out, Eric, and separated it as an impact. As I said, that roaming impact is really the most significant one. Michael, I'll hand over to you.
Yeah. Thanks, Vicki. I think you covered it. I mean, we're very pleased with our mobile performance in the first half. The only comment I'd probably make on the international element is we've also been very pleased with what has occurred in our prepaid book, and we're seeing increasing quality, as Vicki talked about, in our prepaid book. I guess when you look longer term in terms of you know, students and international arrivals, we probably benefit more longer term from a return to population growth as sort of people move to quality as they've been here a little bit longer. Very pleased with first half mobile performance and very happy with where our prices are at in the market and our balance of value and volume. Thank you.
Thanks, Michael.
Thanks you .
We will go to our second question, which is Entcho Raykovski from Credit Suisse.
Morning, all. I've got three questions as well. I'll give all three to you now. The first one, the delay in NBN reseller margin ambitions to FY 2025, I'm also interested in whether this has also been driven by a more competitive environment, given that some of the smaller operators seem to be taking market share. Any comments there would be useful. I guess part of that question, where are you seeing offsets within your business to maintain the overall group ambitions? Is it a stronger mobile performance? Obviously, mobile had a very good first half, so in terms of how you're thinking about that, out to FY 2025. Then secondly, you've obviously touched on mobile, and Michael, those comments around population growth, et cetera, very useful.
Just your views on mobile market share over the period, you added 84,000 postpaid subs. I think Optus had 70,000 over that same period. I guess, are those net adds from your perspective sustainable, or have you perhaps benefited from incumbency given there have been lockdowns and some shadow lockdowns where the incumbent tends to do better and there's limited switching? And then finally, on free cash flow, I guess I'm just trying to understand the second half weighting given the working capital benefit that you got in the first half. Perhaps this is one for Vicki, if you're able to talk to the factors that are driving this. And again, as part of that question, do you expect the working capital benefit to continue beyond FY 2022? Thank you.
Thanks, Enzo. Look, on the NBN reseller margins, I will get Vicki to comment on that and also the free cash flow, and then maybe Michael Ackland can make some comments on mobile market share and the outlook there. There's no doubt that the NBN reseller market, if we look at our peers, their margins have gone backwards, so there's definitely an aspect or an element at play there. The other dynamic that we experience probably more so relative particularly to the newer players is we still are in the world of migrating customers to the NBN, so existing customers to the NBN, whereas they're just targeting new customers. I mentioned in my opening remarks that we are now down to obviously the last few remaining customers that need to switch over to the NBN.
They are some of the most challenging customers to migrate technologically because the NBN has tended to back in some of those, more difficult, technical areas. Which is not a criticism of NBN, by the way, it's just the natural dynamics. That makes it quite a tricky thing to work through. I'm confident we'll be through that by the end of the year, and there's lots of initiatives that we do have in place which, maybe, Vicki can comment on in terms of how we offset it and how we actually get the margin to that, more to that mid-teens level, in the timeframe that we've indicated. Vicki, do you wanna take the rest of the NBN question and the free cash flow one, and then we'll get maybe Michael to speak about mobile trajectory?
Sounds good. Thanks, Enzo, for those questions. Firstly, on the NBN reseller margin, yes, I mean, there are a couple of things that are really driving that shift, moving it to the right. As I spoke to, the benefits of moving our fixed customers onto the new digital stack, we're progressing, but it's a little bit behind where we had hoped to be. That definitely flows through because as I spoke to, we undoubtedly are seeing with the progress we are making on transitioning customers, we're definitely seeing both benefits in customer experience and also benefits flowing through in terms of the cost to support those customers. That's one piece of it. There is no doubt the trading performance is also playing a part.
As we just spoke to, net adds are negative for the half in our C&SB fixed business, so that is playing a part. At the moment, definitely the focus is on that migration of customers to make sure we flow through those customer experience and the cost benefits of that migration. Obviously, we continue to compete in market, and Michael might wanna comment a little bit more on that with some of the things he's got in market right now. On the third question on free cash flow. Yes, my comment on free cash flow weighting, it is consistent with prior years. It's not heavily weighted second half. It's just a little bit more weighted second half, which is what we would ordinarily see.
Yeah, the working capital improvements in the first six months driven by receivables, particularly obviously handset sales, remain at lower levels still with the impacts of retail store foot traffic through the half and also, supply constraints on mobile hardware. So that's played a part. In addition, collections have actually tracked well also. As I look to the second half, obviously we've got a strong focus on managing working capital, and I don't expect any big swings in working capital, so we'll continue to manage that in a very disciplined way. As we look out to 2023 and 2024, obviously one of the big factors will be where do the volume of mobile hardware transactions, settle back to as we get through COVID impacts on foot traffic in stores and we get through various supply constraints on mobile hardware.
We'll have a very strong focus on working capital. We know how important it is, but probably the biggest swing factor as you look further out is that, mobile, volume of hardware revenue, which we'll obviously manage and look to offset through other working capital improvements also. That's the biggest swing factor. Michael, I'll hand across to you.
Well, thanks, Vicki. I'll make a couple of quick comments. The first on the commentary around fixed and those new players, and I'd reinforce Andy's point around you know, they are very attractive to customers, particularly those who've been at the tail end of NBN migration. We're very focused on delivering that significant uplift in customer experience. Although it's delayed, it is coming through, and we expect that to give us a real tailwind. We're also seeing, I think, in terms of our shift of our mix towards the higher speed tiers lift, and we expect that lift to continue as we move forward.
We're feeling confident about where we'll get to on fixed, but that delay in digitization has meant we're not able to get there as quickly as we would've expected. Just on mobiles and the sustainability or otherwise of 5G growth. I mean, just a couple of comments around what defined a little bit around the first half, and I think Andy mentioned we had a strong performance in Enterprise. We had strong growth across all segments, but a particularly strong net add performance in Enterprise. From a Consumer and Small Business point of view, activations were down and activity in the market was down, but only slightly.
Churn, our post-paid handheld churn was down a little bit on a sequential basis, but not dramatically. We're feeling pretty good about our performance in market and our ability to track customers as we move forward.
Thanks, Michael.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Kane Hannan from Goldman Sachs. Go ahead, Kane.
Morning, guys. Just three from me as well, please. Maybe Vicki, just a couple more on the mobile and the second half. Just that AUD 1.50 accounting impact you've called out this half, is that gonna be the same in the second half, or does that move around? Then the enterprise side of things, you know, very strong revenue growth in the first half. You know, is that gonna be supportive of sequential revenue growth going into the second half? Then just one on data and connectivity. You know, just talk a little bit about the pricing environment you're seeing, I suppose what you're expecting in terms of the targets to return to growth in FY 2024. Then a last one on InfraCo Fixed. You know, just following those inflation comments, you know, on the mobile side of things.
Could you just talk about, I suppose, what the overall impact would be on InfraCo Fixed earnings, you know, if we saw a real big pickup in inflation? I mean, I know the NBN payments are CPI linked, but are there any caps or linkages or other things we should be thinking about that might impact InfraCo Fixed earnings? Cheers.
Thanks very much, Kane. I think that was four questions, not three. Anyway, we'll go with that. On InfraCo Fixed, to your point, yes, you know, our business has a natural hedge in it by virtue of the fact that,
Those NBN payments are subject to CPI, which I think creates a lot of value in those income streams as we know. I think overall, our position in a higher inflationary environment is therefore pretty well protected from an InfraCo Fixed perspective. What I'm gonna do, I'll hand to Vicki to pick up your questions on the mobile second half, if she's got anything else to add on InfraCo Fixed. Then it would be good to get David to maybe make the comments on enterprise and through that on data and IP. Vicki.
Yeah, thanks, Andy, and thanks Kane for those questions. On the first one around mobile post-paid handheld ARPU, yes, first half we've seen a AUD 1.50 impact, non-economic impact, but a AUD 1.50 impact on ARPU through those accounting impacts. Just to be clear, what are they? There's two big components of it. One is the accounting impacts I've spoken to for a little while now as we transition to our new plans that split apart the service component and the handset component. A little bit more revenue gets allocated out of mobile service into hardware. That's that ongoing impact as we transition. The second impact is, with some of our add-ons, for example, our upgrade and protect product that we sell to customers, we are now recognizing that on a net margin basis through the revenue line rather than gross.
That's the AUD 1.50. What happens in the second half? In the second half, the impacts from the transitioning of customers to our new plans, that will ease a little bit on a PCP basis. We've seen an AUD 1.50 overall across those two broad impacts in the first half. I still expect a reasonable size impact, but it will be, I expect, a little bit under the AUD 1.50 as we get into the second half on a PCP basis. Andy, no further comments on InfraCo Fixed. I think you covered that well. I'll hand across to David.
Thanks, Vicki. Kane, your question about continued growth in the second half. I'll make a couple of comments, but my opening answer is yes. I do expect to see continued staying in a growth position at top and bottom line in the second half. Vicki and Andy have outlined we have strong performance in the mobility sector, and I would expect that to continue through the remainder of 2022 and into 2023. Our NAS business and where we've built on our professional and managed services, security, IoT, et cetera, continues to grow. We know we have some headwinds around calling applications and legacy systems that are in that portfolio. Vicki also highlighted that while we are being highly competitive in the fixed network space and retaining our T-Fibre SIOs, we'll continue that battle in the marketplace.
It is being disrupted, and it's important that we retain our T-Fibre SIOs, which we're focused on. Our international business, particularly around its wholesale business, is performing extremely well. I do expect those positives to outweigh the challenges that we have in the portfolio, and I do expect that the portfolio will continue to grow at top and bottom line in the second half as we have called.
Thank you, David, and thanks, Kane. Our next question is from Darren Leung from Macquarie.
Great. Thank you, guys. Just two from me. One was just to clarify on that ARPU piece. It sounds like your underlying ARPU washes will be going up, but we just won't see it in the reported number in the second half. Just to confirm that, please. And then the second one is on your NAS revenue guard FY 2025, like I think that's old, but is the mid-teens margin still FY 2022 or is it FY 2025 now? And then the flow through on that, just I've noticed you've kept your FY 2023 ambitions.
Given the delay, or you know, I suppose the smaller than expected digitalization in the fixed business, can you give us a feel for as to what's, I suppose backfilling the change there, please?
Vicki, do you want to take those?
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Darren, for those questions. Yes, just on ARPU, I wanted to highlight those accounting impacts because as we get into the second half, underlying ARPU, we're still seeing growth, but those accounting impacts, we expect to offset it. That was spot on. Your how you're thinking about that is exactly what I was trying to communicate through the presentation. In terms of NAS, to be clear on NAS, we are targeting to get to mid-teens NAS margins by FY 2025, including the internal infrastructure charges. I did want to just talk to this for a little bit. Our prior target was on the basis before we did the restatement to bring the internal infrastructure charges in.
We are maintaining mid-teens with the internal infrastructure charges included, and that's now a target to get to by FY 2025. I spoke about first half of this year. Our NAS EBITDA margin, excluding internal infrastructure charges, was 11%, including them was 8%. It had about a three percentage point impact.
In terms of our impact on margin, we're targeting for this financial year to get to 13% excluding them. Yes, we've still got that ambition to get to mid-teens NAS margin. On NBN, yes, as I've talked to the move of customers to the new digital stack is tracking just a bit behind where we had hoped to be. Overall, obviously, as we set guidance and we look at growth in the business, we will always be managing. Things don't always go exactly to plan as much as we w uld love them to. Yeah, we've been able to pick up in other areas and still get the outcomes we needed overall for Telstra.
For example, obviously, we're on track on our productivity target, delivering AUD 254 million of cost out, so on track to get to AUD 430 for the full year. When we face something like this, absolutely, we look to pick it up in other areas. And obviously, overall on underlying EBITDA, mobile is performing well and obviously the key contributor to that underlying EBITDA growth in the half. Nathan, back to you.
Thanks, Vicki. Our next question is from Tom Beadle from UBS.
Hi, guys. Thanks for the opportunity to ask questions. I've got three as well, please. Just, firstly, another one on inflation. I mean, are you seeing any pressure in your cost base today? I realize your T25 targets include productivity gains that are net of inflation, but, you know, what are you assuming there around underlying inflation, and how sensitive are those assumptions to higher than expected inflation? And do you have any strategy just ready to roll out to offset higher than expected inflation with price increases? Second question around your mobile customer numbers.
You know, you touched on the population decline as impacting earlier, but you know, have you done any work around you know this impact of you know lower net migration and fewer visa holders and how that might have impacted your subscriber numbers? For example, you know, TPG has spoken about the number of customers they've lost with international IDs. Just so we can try and quantify the opportunity there once borders fully reopen. Then just finally on residential fixed wireless. You know, TPG and Optus both have some fairly competitive 4G and 5G home broadband products out there when you compare them with NBN plans. You know, can you provide an update there on your on-net fixed wireless strategy?
You know, to what extent are you pushing these plans below the line? What sort of take-up are you seeing? Thanks.
Thanks very much, Tom. Yeah, look, a couple of responses. I mean, firstly, in relation to inflation, you know, obviously we're experiencing the same dynamic that everybody else is in this regard, and I think wage inflation is probably the area of most immediate concern. I mean, I think at a practical level, it hasn't flowed through yet, other than I would say in one area, which is in, really, in software engineering, and that's been more to do with our ability to source and maintain productivity in our digitization program, which Vicki has spoken about a little bit, as well. It's obviously real and I think all businesses are facing that. In terms of strategy, it's not changing our outlook or our commitment in terms of productivity.
Our 500 million net productivity target for the T25 initiative is unchanged. Of course, we're in pretty good shape to deliver the AUD 2.7 billion by the end of this financial year. Then Vicki alluded to the fact that because we have made the changes, particularly in relation to our consumer and small business customer plans, and we've simplified them, we have, you know, more than 80% of customers on them now. It means that our pricing strategies, and I'm not gonna talk to what they are because that wouldn't be appropriate, but just in terms of mechanically, we're able to make changes much more efficiently, much more quickly, and flow them through the base, whether those price changes are up or down or otherwise.
You know, the reason we put in the simplified plans in the first place is we just, you know, in our own research, found that customers were just sick of telcos giving them plans where the pricing was confusing, they were locked into contracts, there was lots of additional charges, excess data charges, these types of things. We've gone for a much more simplified model, and therefore, any pricing changes that we would make, we're well equipped to be able to do that in a similar fashion. I think on the mobile SIOs, you know, pre-COVID, I think I'm right in saying that Australia was enjoying a net population growth of sort of 150,000-200,000 people a year.
That doesn't sound a lot, but in, you know, in a market where we have 50% market share or just a little bit south of 50% market share, if we acquire sort of a proportional number of those customers, you know, that's, you know, up to 100,000 net new SIOs in a year. So that is quite material and my sort of data and, I guess, intel suggests that that net population has gone to more or less zero over the last couple of years now. I think Michael's already spoken to our sorta, I guess, cohort of customers is slightly different to some of our competitors, less dependent on student migration, et cetera. But nonetheless, the broader comment remains the same. On fixed wireless access, you know, you've heard me talk about this many times.
I can remember when 5G was first in the narrative and before it was launched, and used to get asked regularly whether 5G will replace NBN, and then lots of people that thought it wouldn't. I've always made the point, "No, it won't." What it is, though, is it is a very good complementary technology which would be appropriate for certain cohort of our customers who might be on other services that are not delivering them the sort of experience that we could deliver through a 5G fixed wireless. One of the things that we've done is we've taken a very considered and measured approach to building a very sophisticated service quality tool.
What that means at a practical level is that before we make offers to customers which are predominantly below the line, before we do that, we are making sure that we're assessing that a 5G technology is, in fact, the best technology for them, and in fact, based on what their current experience is. We are getting very strong interest in that. When we do approach customers with that proposition, there's a lot of interest in it. It's seen as highly valuable. We have been dealing with a few stock constraints on modems as well, but I think over time, it's going to be an important part of what we're doing. As I say, only for the right customers.
Look, with that said, I might hand over and see if Vicki or Michael wanted to add anything to what I said on sort of inflation and mobile declines, et cetera. Sorry, population impacting mobile.
No, I thought you covered it well, Andy. Nothing else for me to add.
Nothing from me, Andy. Thanks. I think you hit all the points.
Okay. We will go to our next question then, which is from Lucy Huang from BofA.
Thanks, guys. I just have two quick questions. Firstly, in relation to prepaid mobile, I think you guys mentioned that the quality of the business is improving. Just wondering if you can give us some color as to, you know, how many consumers are now using that auto-recharge capability and what the trend has been. And then just secondly, in relation to InfraCo Fixed, just wondering if you can give us some color around what's left in that NBN commercial works line. You know, how much should we or could we expect to continue to come out of the business as the NBN commercial work starts to taper off? Thanks.
Thanks, Lucy. I'll get Michael to talk about the dynamics in prepaid, and I'll invite Brendan to make some comments on InfraCo Fixed and any comments he wants to add in relation to any of the questions that have already come up on InfraCo. Michael.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Lucy. Yeah, we have seen an increased uptake of auto recharges, but also an increased uptake of active app users among our prepaid base, particularly as we've moved on to the new digital stack. We're now, with prepaid, we're at 100% of our recharge and activation activity on that new digital stack. That is moving through the base, and we're also seeing that lift our average ARPU. I mean, I wouldn't say that it's a majority of customers, but we've seen a significant lift in the number of people moving on to auto recharge. I think it's largely driven by the improved experience and ease of being able to do that. We're also seeing...
The other probably point there is we're seeing prepaid through Telstra Plus where people are linking all of their accounts both their postpaid and prepaid and that is improving the I think the quality of our prepaid base as well. Thank you. Over to you, Brendan.
Yeah. Thanks very much, Michael, and thanks for the question, Lucy. We still have a little bit more to go in terms of the roll-off from the NBN volumes. But we still have a pretty strong commercial and recoverable works business. We've got a little bit more to go before we start to hit the bottom of the NBN declines. But once we get there, then I'd certainly be expecting that we would have a modestly growing commercial and recoverable works business going forward.
Excellent. Our next question is from Roger Samuel from Jefferies. Roger.
I've got two questions as well. First one, just on Digicel. Just wondering if the business is still performing as you expected before, and you know, just given the recent natural disaster at Tonga and yeah, what has that impacted the business? Secondly, on a mobile business, just wondering if you're still getting a lot of growth adds from JB Hi-Fi channel and if you're still running promotions and what's gonna be the impact on your mobile outlook going forward? Thanks.
Thanks very much, Roger. Look, on Digicel, actually, the business is performing, continuing to perform well. It's in fact performing ahead of budget. I think as you know, the business includes operations in six markets, including Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Tonga, Samoa, and Nauru. I should say, by the way, I mean, obviously it was a very tragic natural disaster that impacted the people of Tonga, and it's only a relief that there wasn't too much sort of personal injury and loss of life. There was some, which is obviously very sad, but there's also been, you know, quite a significant impact on just in terms of there needing to be a cleanup with the ash that's fallen on the country.
We have actually been providing quite a bit of support, both in terms of providing temporary satellite backup to Tonga, because one of the cables into Tonga was completely cut about 35 km off the coast as a consequence of the eruption. We've provided both on the ground infrastructure to give them restore communications, and then also support through the Digicel Foundation, which has been provided. We haven't actually completed the acquisition yet, but we've been working in partnership with the Digicel team to support them. Tonga's got a population of about 100,000 people, whereas Papua New Guinea is more like 9 million. In the context of Digicel, Papua New Guinea is by far the biggest business.
While the events are obviously very concerning in Tonga for the Tonga people, in terms of its impact on Digicel, it's relatively small. Obviously we wanna do everything that we can to help. Sorry, I'm now-
JB Hi-Fi, sorry, was the second part of your question. I might hand that over to Michael.
Yeah, thanks, Andy, and thanks for the question. Yeah, JB Hi-Fi continues to perform incredibly well for us. We have done a lot of work on how we've structured the offers and the way that we compete in market and have lifted our TMMC on JB Hi-Fi over the last 24 months pretty significantly. I would say it's doing the job that we need to do it and it's doing it at great value. When we look at our book on JB Hi-Fi and the way that it's performing over time, it's delivering good ARPU outcomes as well. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you.
We've got a few more analyst questions, and then we'll go to media. Just a reminder, if you're media on the call and you'd like to ask a question, please press star one. Our next question is from Brian Han from Morningstar. Brian.
Oh, thanks. I have two questions, if I may. In mobile, after adjusting for the infrastructure cost allocation, can you please give us an idea as to what the mobile EBITDA margin would have been a couple of years ago when it was at its lows and, you know, discounting and competition were at their worst? Also what the margin would have been back in the heydays of 2016 or around there? The second question was, I see the change in the timing of the mid-teens margin target for reselling NBN. But can you please talk about how high the overall margin for the whole fixed consumer and small business division can improve to once all the legacy migrations and cost efficiencies are done? Thanks.
Thanks very much, Brian. Good question on the trend of the mobile margin, 'cause you picked some interesting inflection points in the industry, because certainly as an industry, we saw mobile ARPUs increase between about 2011-2012 through to 2016 off the back of the migration, if you like, and the launch of 4G, which occurred in 2014. Then since 2016, we saw ARPUs at an industry level decline all the way through into you know, literally in the last sort of six to 12 months. We're starting to see that turn around. But I'll get Vicki. She's probably closer to the actual numbers across that period than I am, or maybe have them to hand.
I'll ask her to respond to that. On the NBN reseller, I mean, really once everybody is fully migrated to the NBN, and as you might recall, under the government's policy, NBN have an obligation to provide a fixed line NBN home broadband service to 92% of the population. For the final 8% of the population, they provide that service. They have an obligation to provide a service, but that's not necessarily with a fixed line. For that part of the population, they're providing it via satellite and a fixed wireless solution. Now with the 92%, customers are compulsorily obliged to transition across, so they have to, and they're given 18 months once it becomes available in their area, and we are nearing the end of that particular transition.
In the 8%, while NBN is obliged to provide a service via satellite or via fixed wireless, customers don't actually have to move off of their existing service. We do continue to provide ADSL services on a wholesale and a retail basis, as well as, of course, a standalone fixed fixed line voice service in the last 8%. You probably recall that we've said that our objective is to limit our losses essentially on that residual part of the network to, and Vicki will get the words precisely right for me, but around AUD 100 million. That is because, as you can imagine, while it represents only 8% of the population, it doesn't necessarily represent 8% of the fixed infrastructure assets that we have to maintain in some of the techs and some of the services.
Of course, that 8% is in the more regional and rural and more remote, which are per capita sort of higher services to maintain than elsewhere, which is hence why we make a net loss on it. Which goes a bit to the contrary to what a lot of people talk about the USO and USO reform and how Telstra receives, you know, AUD 300 million for providing those USO services. We don't actually, it's a bit less than AUD 300 million. By the way, we pay AUD 100 million of that ourselves anyway, and we actually lose money on it. We're not getting any particular free ride or benefit for that.
One of the things you may have seen in the ACCC report that was published on Monday, which the government has yet to respond to, is a strong recommendation for USO reform. That's something that we've been advocating, in fact, going all the way back to 2015, because it needs to be done on a much more technology-agnostic basis, rather than continuing to essentially require investment in copper, which is a great technology, but it is an aging technology. With that said, I might just hand over to Vicki and see if she's got any more color to add on those mobile margins, going back and adjusting for the infrastructure charge and anything else to add on the mid-teens NBN and fixed profitability.
Thanks, Andy, and thanks, Brian, for those questions. Just in terms of this half, the mobile EBITDA margin we've reported does include the internal infrastructure charges, and we've reported, obviously, EBITDA of 41.8% in terms of that EBITDA margin. When we restated with the infrastructure charges included, that had about a four percentage point impact on our mobile EBITDA margin. The thing I would say when we're going back and comparing to where EBITDA margins were, you know, back many years at some of the high points in the industry, firstly, at the moment, we are seeing lower hardware revenues as a consequence of volumes being lower with, obviously, the COVID restriction impacts on foot traffic into stores and obviously supply constraints as well at the moment.
That mix of revenue does play a part as well, Brian. That's an important piece to keep in mind because that's sitting lower at the moment. Obviously, the overall EBITDA percentage margin does look higher. If you go back historically, and I have been in the industry quite a long time, yes, we did go through some points where we saw mobile EBITDA margins historically around that mid-40s range. As we've talked about, we've had a very clear and consistent strategy under T22, and we've been executing on that, and you can see that very much translating into the mobile business, both in terms of ARPU but also in terms of EBITDA margin.
This is the half also where we have the final benefits of the transition of subsidy and lease plans flow in, but we would expect EBITDA margins, you know, to remain strong in the mobile business. Certainly, as I spoke about, you see that operating leverage as we grow service revenue in mobile, and we're continuing to drive productivity and take costs out of the business. You can see that translating. Brian, hopefully that gives you a little bit. Yes, the internal infrastructure charges do impact the EBITDA margin about 4%. It is a little tricky to go back and compare just given the makeup of revenue today to where it used to sit. Obviously, plans were very different in the market back many years ago when subsidies were obviously the core of the plans getting sold in the market.
Just in terms of overall fixed margin longer run, we obviously we've got the ambition on NBN resale, which is clear. Andy spoke about some of the other components. In the legacy copper business, our goal is to limit those losses to AUD 100 million, around AUD 100 million per annum on average, through the T25 period, and that does exclude the internal infrastructure charges. The other things I would put in your mind as you're looking longer run at the fixed CNSB business, obviously there's the NBN reseller margin improvement. I've spoken a little bit today that we do think fixed wireless access is an opportunity and, we'll see that sort of scale up through FY 2023. That is helpful in the overall fixed CNSB EBITDA margin.
Finally, we do have an ambition under T25 as well to double the revenues from our business application services, so to small business customers selling in those applications and services. That's another piece as you're looking at it. We haven't given a direct ambition on the overall C&SB fixed margin, but when you put those pieces together, you can probably, I think, come up with a reasonable picture of where the business is headed. Nathan, back to you.
Thank you, Vicki. Our last analyst question comes from Rod Smith from Rimor. Go ahead, Rod.
Hi, guys. Thanks very much for taking my questions. Just a couple and they're kind of, I guess, at the margin questions on potential future risk
The first is just, you know, with relation to the Starlink satellite system, which now seems to be up and running, and there seems to be some good reports coming through of performance for remote areas. Likewise, your own contract with Viasat just shows that sort of satellite capacity to serve the market, which didn't really exist or almost didn't exist except for NBN's product before is increasing soon and quite dramatically. I suppose intuitively it feels like that should only have any effect at the margin at remote locations, which could well be positive for yourself in terms of your cost for serving those regions now if the USO requirements change.
I'm just wondering, is there any risk that given the capacity that's going in there, that this could become more than just current remote rural regions and perhaps move more into towns and have more of a direct competitive influence on, broadband supply, and in particular perhaps places that would have otherwise taken 5G fixed wireless services? I guess that's the first part of the question. The second part of that question, which is looking further out, is there a risk that these satellite systems can actually become much better at offering phone services rather than simply broadband services, and in particular mobile services? In which case they become again more of a threat to, you know, your superior coverage versus competitors.
I have a second question, which maybe if you could answer that, maybe I can ask the second question after. Is that okay?
Well, why don't you just get the second question out, Rod, and then I can get Tony
All right. Anyways. It's coming back.
I'll take the first one.
Yep, no problems. It is coming back to this theoretical question of what happens in an inflationary market. I'm going to narrow that inflationary market down and say, what happens in an inflationary market where product inflation is faster than wage inflation perhaps? You've got consumers who are squeezed on discretionary spending. When you've got a product which is absolutely mainstream with its 50% share, but is mainstream with a 20% price premium over the competitors. In that sort of environment, how would you protect your market share?
Yeah, no, look, thanks very much, Rod. Look, just quickly, I mean, on that second part of the question, and I'll throw it to Vicki and Michael maybe to comment as well once I've commented on satellites. I think in terms of differentiating, it has to be, I think the same approach that we've always taken. I mean, you know, all really that the last two years has shown is just the criticality of communications and the demand for bandwidth, the demand for coverage, the demand for speed, the demand for resiliency, the demand for network quality has only increased. I accept your point on discretionary spend, but when it comes to discretionary spend, people have to prioritize where they're gonna spend. I think, you know, telecommunications services is gonna be high up on that list.
The quality of telecommunications services and the support that people get is gonna be, you know, the key differentiating factor. We've talked a couple of times and touched on this, as well as the ability or the simplicity with which we can make appropriate pricing changes either up or down, as well. I don't think I have too much more to add on that, but I'll ask Vicki to see if she or Michael would like to comment from a consumer point of view. On satellites, it's a bit the same. I sort of mentioned this earlier when 5G first came along, everyone sorta said, "Oh, it's gonna replace NBN." I said, "No, it's not. What it's gonna do is it's gonna complement NBN." I think I would say the same is the case with satellites.
If you think about the amount of demand for data and how it's increased and changed over time. When we launched 3G, which was back in the mid-2000s, 1% of all traffic on the network was data and 99% was voice. Today, that is completely the opposite. It's far less than 1% is voice and far more than 99% is data. Data volumes have increased 3,000 times since the mid-2000s. That's only going to continue as technology adoption increases and of course, as files get bigger. With satellites, the main challenges with satellites is their proximity to Earth. GEO sats probably sit at about 35,000 km away, and LEO sats sit at anywhere between sort of 800-2,000 km away.
The key thing about satellites is you've got to get the signal from Earth to the satellite and back, and that causes both a power challenge and it's a latency challenge. For home broadband, the challenge can be mitigated by virtue of the fact that you've got an antenna on your home or a satellite dish on your home, and that is directly powered and directly aimed at the satellite so you can get the signal when you've got the power to send that signal. That's a much more harder thing to do when it comes to handsets. Also you have to transmit that signal when you get to the ground anyway, which is part of what we're doing with the new ViaSat-3 geostationary satellite system for Viasat.
We're building all the ground infrastructure, not just by the way for Australia, but Australia is their ground station base from which they're gonna project signals back into the rest of Asia. The point of saying all of that is you can see it absolutely as an alternative solution or another technology that can provide home broadband service. The latency point is an issue obviously on broadband, but it's also particularly an issue on voice, particularly for GEO sats. LEO sats can potentially make a difference there as well. Bear in mind, we're a reseller of NBN services, which is the wholesale provider of broadband.
As we've been discussing numerous times, it's come up during the conversation this morning, our NBN reseller margins are pretty thin, and our losses that we make from essentially servicing that last 8% and USO. I think the development of satellite is a great technology for us today. It'll complement our existing technologies and address some of the services and some of the challenges that we face today, particularly servicing that last 8%. The Starlink system is a direct to customer system. It's pretty pricey. I mean, not to say it won't come down, but I think it's about a AUD 1,500 one-off cost and plus AUD 140 a month for the actual service. But that could come down and that does offer a service.
Like all technologies, it's subject to capacity constraints. In the early days, of course, people will get a better experience, but as that fills up, it will require more satellites to go up. LEO sats tend to fall out of orbit pretty frequently and maximum sort of lifespan of five years. There's a lot of CapEx involved in relaunching rockets and relaunching satellites. Look, I think the net-net is that satellite is another interesting, innovative, complementary technology. We've just done a major deal in the next generation of GEO sats, which I think puts us in a really good position to take advantage of that, whether that's for end customer services, backhaul, emergency services, IoT, whole range of different use cases.
As I flagged, when we did the Viasat announcement, we also have a number of plans in the LEO sat space as well, which I will talk more about in the coming period of time. With all of that said, I mean, I suppose the piece I didn't answer is it likely to encroach more into sort of metro and more sort of urban use cases? I can't see it doing that. I mean, peri-urban, maybe. Peri-urban are sort of these locations which are quite close to city centers, but very, very difficult to serve from a fixed, wireless, and mobile perspective because of the topography and the low density of population. That could be a role to play.
I think, you know, there's so much investment in mobile and fixed and other infrastructure that, which is much more proximate, obviously, to customers where I think, you know, satellite's probably not gonna be as efficient. Look, with all of that said, Vicki, any more comments from you on the inflationary point?
Yeah. Thanks, Andy, and thanks, Rod, for that. Just under that inflationary scenario that you spoke about, just one thing to add. You know, the price-sensitive end of the market is an end of the market that obviously exists, and we've seen growth in that segment of the market over time. What's important as we think about that is obviously our multi-brand strategy. The Telstra brand, yes, operates at that premium and, you know, it remains very important to us, and that's why we do have a multi-brand strategy in place. Our ability to compete through brands like Belong or through our MVNOs in some of those more price-sensitive parts of the market, is an important part of underpinning how we compete. Rod, that's one I would just add.
As Andy spoke to, certainly what we've seen with the Telstra premium, you know, through COVID, obviously connectivity matters more than ever. Maintaining that premium position with the Telstra brand and using our multi-brand strategy to compete, as you think about the scenario you spoke about, obviously how we would execute would be, again, very much reliant on that multi-brand strategy and ensuring obviously we maintain that Telstra premium. Michael, I'm not sure if you wanted to add any comments to that.
Only one comment. I think the other one that is an important part of our strategy moving forward is how we differentiate based on the network experience, differentiate based on the kind of connectivity experiences people wanna get, and we think they're gonna expand. While their affordability is always a challenge, and even more so in the scenario you described, I think the opportunity to deliver optimized experiences for people, for their specific needs and their willingness to pay, that can bring some structure into the market on the consumer side in the way that data inclusions have in the past.
Thank you all. We'll close the investor and analyst question time there, and we'll now move to media. So our first media question is from David Swan from The Australian. Go ahead, David.
Thanks very much, and good to chat as always, guys. Got a couple of questions. Wanted to ask firstly from a consumer perspective, in this environment with, you know, inflation being what it is and, can consumers be expecting to pay a bit more with regards to their postpaid plans in particular? Is that something that will be sort of rising over the next 12 months? Will it be the same? What can you share there from a consumer's perspective? Secondly, for Andy, was wondering if you can update us at all with regards to, I guess any succession planning for yourself. Is this something you're thinking about, or if there's anything you can just update us on with regards to yourself?
Thanks very much, David. I don't know how much of the call that you've been on. Obviously, it wouldn't be appropriate for me to disclose any plans that we might have from a pricing perspective, and so we won't do that. I mean, I think, you know, all we can really say is that yes, we know the inflationary pressures. They are real. I don't think we've felt the full weight of those significantly to date, but I guess all of the economic data and all the experts tend to point to it. We will obviously do our best to try and make sure that we mitigate the impact of that on shareholders and also on customers. We do.
We've made some significant changes to really try and simplify our overall approach to pricing for customers so that if we do need to make price changes, we'll do it in a way which is simple and easy and hopefully mitigates the impact as much as possible. Well, I'm not sure I can say too much more than that, but I'll see if Vicki wants to say something. Look, in terms of succession planning, I mean, what I can say is, look, I am incredibly proud to work with a very, very capable team, and I think, you know, your job as the CEO, regardless of your own plans, is to make sure that there is always succession within the team, you know, save for getting knocked over by the proverbial bus tomorrow.
That's always a risk, and so therefore, it's a responsibility, and I'm lucky to work with, I think, the most talented management team in the country, and there's plenty of succession opportunities in there if I happen to, as I say, fall under that accidental bus. In the meantime, I'm very happy doing what I'm doing. Vicki, anything more on inflation?
The only thing I'd add, and David, it's a great question, is I just think as you look at where we've moved to in our plans that we offer to our consumer and small business customers, they do have flexibility, so they're not locked in. As their needs change, maybe as their budget changes, they do have the ability to obviously change plans to suit their needs. We do compete in market with a multi-brand strategy, so the likes of Belong obviously plays an important part along with our MVNOs. I'd just add those couple of points, Andy.
Thanks, David.
Thanks, David. Our next question is from Zoe Samios from Fairfax.
Morning, guys. Thanks for the presentation today. Just two from me. One, Andy, I'm just wondering if there's anything you can say around how you expect consumer confidence to be in the lead up to the federal election. I know there are other sectors that are expecting things to slow just as we get towards, I think it will be May. Secondly, I just wanted to ask you about staff shortages. Is that an issue for you? Where are you seeing it, if so? Do you think it will be a problem in future?
I think, Zoe, just on the second one first, I mean, in terms of our turnover, we've had really good retention and, you know, and our employee engagement is increasing, as I've mentioned. You know, I think we're in a really good place. We're attracting people to Telstra and we're retaining people at Telstra, some really good talent, so we're in a good place in that regard. I think the one area where I have noted that we have seen some impact is mainly through third-party contracts where we have been, particularly where we've used those for IT development, particularly around the digitization program. There's no doubt that demand for software engineers, you know, specialists in those key areas has been increasing and that's been challenging.
That has impacted our digitization delivery a little bit. Look, I still back us as an employer of choice. As we announced last year, one of the platforms of our T25 strategy is to be the place you want to work by adopting new ways of working, by really doubling down on hybrid ways of working, supporting our people, and also by working in a way which sort of develops a digital leadership, digital first approach. That all, I think, is gonna help us well on a relative basis. In terms of consumer confidence, look, you know, I think these things are always harder to answer. I'm not a pollster. I don't have any empirical evidence on these things.
I think the biggest thing, candidly, that has really affected activity and operating dynamics for us over the last period of time has been the various different impacts of COVID on our ability to keep our stores open and to have that retail presence. That's either been as a consequence of guidelines from state governments that we can't have stores open and/or it's been as a consequence of people that have been impacted by COVID. They've either contracted COVID themselves or they're caring for somebody with COVID or they're needing to self-isolate.
That has had an impact over the last six months or so, or maybe three months or so since Omicron has sort of escalated and at times we've had, you know, probably up to 40 or 50 stores, which we've either had to have on reduced hours or closed completely for a short period of time. I think probably that's all I could say. I figure hopefully we're coming out of that now. But to me, looking at it through our lens, that's been the biggest, I guess, dynamic that's been going on for consumers.
Okay, thank you.
Thanks, Zoe. Our next question is from John Durie from The Australian. John.
Hi, Andy. Two clarifications, if I could. Firstly, around health, you talked about 9% growth there, and it's in the other category, which I think was AUD 330 million in revenue or thereabout in the half. I just wondered how much of that would be health. The second one was around energy. You talked about how the Victorian regulator had given you clearance, and you were doing trials. I wondered whether you could give us a bit more color about when you think you'll be able to roll out the product and what it will be and likewise.
Hi, John. Great to hear from you and, yeah, no, thanks very much. On energy, it was 9% growth on an organic basis plus and 37% if we include the acquisitions that we announced middle of last year and we completed in the half. Vicki, can you remind me if we separate out our health revenues? I can't remember.
We don't separate them out, Andy, but we have talked to, at the last Investor Day, what the health business' revenue overall was. Just to John's question, it was a little over AUD 100 million revenue in the half.
We're predicting high-teens revenue growth for the year, John. You can imagine, therefore, that's over AUD 200 million. You might recall that when we announced our T25 strategy in September of last year, we also set our aspiration to get that to AUD 0.5 billion Of revenue by 2025. We had a good milestone on that with the signing of the 1800RESPECT contract a couple of weeks ago, which is an AUD 200 million contract over five years. We're well on our way there. Then on energy, basically, the product is a retail reseller energy product backed with a green sort of renewable energy commitment, and it will be basically made available obviously to Telstra customers.
We are looking to incorporate it into our Telstra Plus program as well. Of course, we will all be backed with smart meters. I mentioned the Intellihub deal that we've done more broadly. I mean, obviously, smart meters have been a requirement in Victoria for some years, but not outside of Victoria. That's another feature of it. Over time, we're looking at also how we can link that with our modem in-house, so we can provide some really interesting data and some tools for customers to really optimize and manage their energy product. At the moment, as I say, getting the licenses took a bit longer than we had hoped or planned, but we have them all in all states now. We're currently trialing with customers.
Between now and the end of the calendar year, we will be ramping up the retail offering. Michael Ackland's on the line. I don't know, Michael, if you have any more comments about when we might be sort of going above the line and at scale on energy. It will be obviously delivered through Michael's business.
Yeah. No, I think you've covered it, Andy. I mean, we'll be ramping up as we exit this financial year and into the next one. It's a really exciting retail product. It'll be fully integrated in terms of how customers can get access to information through our My Telstra app and some of those things that you talked about in terms of the opportunities with the smart meter and the smart modem and how we can innovate around that over time, I think, is very exciting. We would be looking to ramp and above the line as we exit this financial year and into the next one.
I think that's the point, John, is that one of the things that which made us take longer than we might have otherwise done is, I mean, we could have built this on the side and that probably would have enabled us to go more quickly, and sometimes it's appropriate to do that. On this service, there's so much synergy from our perspective and also from a customer's perspective between having a home energy service and then also a home broadband service, is that we have built it on the new digital stack and the new digital technology that we have been building, including, as Michael said, My Telstra. It's a much more integrated solution for our customers.
Thanks, John.
Just one quick follow-up.
Thanks.
Which company will you be reselling?
Well, we won't be necessarily reselling any one company, but we will be packaging, because we have a number of our own power agreements. You might recall, we backed wind farms in Queensland and also solar farms in Queensland and also in New South Wales. We will basically have a wholesale arrangement which enables us to provide a accredited, essentially green energy solution through to our customers.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thanks, John.
Our next question is from Richard Chirgwin from iTnews. Richard.
Greetings and thanks for the presentation. I just got three questions, one relating to NBN, one relating to the digitization, and one relating to satellites. On the NBN, basically, what's the likely impact on Telstra of those, the proposed changes to the CVC structure?
That NBN is talking about, and what's your sensitivity to future changes to the Special Access Undertaking? Regarding digitization, we've talked a lot today about the My Telstra app. What other components of digitization are there, and what's the total investment in that? Finally, can Telstra discuss what its interest in future LEO sats might be?
Thanks very much, Richard. Look, on the last one, I mentioned in an earlier question that we will be talking more about some initiatives we have in the LEO sat space, in the coming short period of time. You will hear more from us on that. Look, suffice it to say, I mean, I think, satellites and LEO sat have a number of interesting use cases. There's obviously the provision of just straightforward broadband services to customers, and NBN already offers one in Sky Muster. Starlink offers one. Sky Muster is a GEO sat. Starlink is a LEO sat. Viasat offer them globally through GEO sats. There are other options. So that's one area of potential use case. Then there's lots of others.
There's IoT, particularly for regional and rural cases. Where farmers are wanting to use digitally enabled farm engineering equipment, tractors, combines, headers, irrigators, fertilizers, et cetera, that can be problematic because not necessarily every paddock has got coverage, whereas our LEO sats can play well there. Also backhaul. We use satellite a lot for backhaul, particularly where we can't run fiber, so that's another use case. Emergency service is another use case. We're doing quite a lot of work at the moment, and as I say, I'll talk more about it in the coming period.
On digitization, I mean, essentially, we have both for our consumer and small business business and for our enterprise business, if you think about everything above the layer of the network, so that is how we engage with our customers digitally, whether it's through the app or through a website, and also then through to our CRM systems, our customer relationship management system, where we all have all of our customer data and which all of our agents use. That goes through to our provisioning systems and also our billing systems. That whole environment is what we have been basically upgrading and replacing. We have invested, well, we announced in 2016 a AUD 3 billion incremental CapEx spend across networks and digitization, and we have been continuing to invest since then.
I would say, you know, it's close. It's between AUD 1.5 billion and AUD 2 billion over the last several years that we have invested in that, and we are now at the tail end of that. We're looking in very, very good shape in terms of getting the benefits of it. The NPS and the responses from our customers are just transformationally different than when they were operating in our legacy environment. That's really good. On the NBN, one, the process for the NBN at the moment is that the ACCC is going through a process of reviewing the pricing structure and also essentially connected with that is the Special Access Undertaking.
There have not been any decisions or any changes that have been communicated, so I can't comment specifically on what the sensitivity to us is. Like all RSPs, we're keenly interested to see what the results of that review are. I think it's a once in a 20-year opportunity to really get the settings for the future. There's obviously a model that's been used over the last 10 years and that served a purpose. I think as we look forward into the digital future, obviously we want an infrastructure or rather a framework for the Special Access Undertaking and pricing that's gonna work for everybody, work for NBN, work for the RSPs, and work for end customers. We're keen to see how that plays out.
I think the one thing I would say is that all of the retail industry doesn't really provide services or price services on the basis of how much data people use anymore. There aren't any excess data charges really anymore. To see the wholesale price and retail price are out of sync at the moment, and that is a bit of a structural problem and one which we hope gets addressed through the review.
Thank you, Andy. Our last question comes from Lucas Baird from the AFR.
Hey, guys. How you going? Just two from me. I was wondering with the federal election coming up, what policy issues do you want to see sort of tackled by the major parties going into that? What would you like to see sort of out of their sort of any commitments to telco infrastructure or anything like that? Secondly, I was wondering whether you're concerned about any sort of increased competitive threat to the enterprise business with Optus hiring Gladys Berejiklian the other week, apparently to try and take the sort of share of government contracts that you guys have traditionally dominated up until this point.
Thanks very much, Lucas. Look, on the federal election, I think I was just saying in response to Richard's question, we were talking a bit about obviously the NBN policy, but that whole die has been cast, and the ACCC are doing a review on the Special Access Undertaking at the moment. I think the most important thing, and I've said this previously when I chaired the Business Council of Australia's committee on input to the digital economy work that the government has been working on, is we need to think about telecommunications infrastructure and things like cloud infrastructure as key enablers to a broader aspiration of the government for Australia to be a world-leading digital economy by 2030.
In how that manifests itself and what I think related to the NBN is that ultimately, if we can all fulfill that aspiration for Australia to be a world-leading digital economy, the dividend from that, from a productivity point of view to the country and the nation, is huge. Therefore, getting the policy around the infrastructure is incredibly important. A couple of things come out of that. One is the structure of pricing, you know, between wholesale and retail, and also the service obligations between wholesale and retail need to be better aligned, and that work is underway. The other thing is to look towards making policy that is much more technology agnostic and also provider agnostic for that matter as well.
Historically, a lot of telecommunications policy has been, if you like, organized around copper or, and/or the particular nature of the service or broadband being fixed or whether it's wireless. Whereas actually, from a practical point of view as an operator, I want the ability to use the best technologies and change those over time and have flexibility around that, whether it's satellite, GEO, LEO, 5G, fiber, whatever it may be. I wanna be able to use those to deliver a solution to a customer who ultimately doesn't care how they're actually getting the signal in the end. What they care about is whether they're getting it. At the moment, the legislative and the regulatory environment is a bit too sort of, I guess, silo-oriented around technological. No more is that the case. Good example is in relation to the USO.
The other thing I would say is that it needs to be much more agnostic against the provider. So if you think about the types of services that telco provides, those services are now provided by other types of providers. So if you think about SMS messaging, it's not very different than an iMessage on an Apple phone or a WhatsApp message, or even a voice service that we may provide. There's lots of alternative voice services that you can use on apps such as Signal and Viber or whatever it is. I can't quite remember the name of the other. But there are a lot of universal type service obligations that are imposed on telcos as carriers that are regulated, but not actually imposed on any of those other providers.
I think therefore it's important that we actually harmonize the regulatory impositions so that everybody is playing on a level playing field. They would be the big macro points from a federal, sort of, national policy point of view, to try and make sure we've got the best infrastructure to support a digital economy. Then on your point about Gladys Berejiklian's appointment at one of our competitors, all I would say is, look, you know, I wish her the very best. She's obviously a very experienced and very capable leader, and I'm sure that, you know, they'll continue to be a competitor, very sort of respected competitor that we deal with in the market.
We've got very, very strong enterprise and government business. We just signed a major contract with Department of Defence. We've done a lot with the Department of Education across all of the states over the last 12 months, and we will continue to be a very, very significant provider to government and enterprise. We just wish Gladys very all the best in her new role.
Great. Thank you. That was our last question. Our question and answer time has come to an end. Before we close, I'll hand over to Andy for any final remarks.
Well, I think, look, just from me, thank you everybody as always for hooking in. As I say, a little bit of a shame to do this one virtually again. I guess we'll probably do most of them at least partially virtually in the future. I do hope I'll also get to see some of you face-to-face in the near future. We just appreciate your interest and your commitment and your availability to be here with us virtually today. Thank you, and wish you all the best for the coming period of time before we catch up again.
Thank you.