Ladies and gentlemen, welcome here in Brussels or online. Great you're joining us for this capital markets day. I'm not gonna keep you waiting for too long, as we have a very interesting set of presentations for you. We will kick off this session with the CEO, Guillaume Boutin, who will take us through the three-year strategy, bold2025. Guillaume, the floor is yours.
Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us here in Brussels or virtually. Before starting, I would like to wish you a fantastic 2023. For Proximus, this year kicks off with today's Capital Markets Day. I'm super happy to be here together with the members of the management team to share with you our vision and ambitions for the next three years. Today, we'll go through several presentations, there are two elements that are key and which I would like you to take away. First, we speak about a story that you have probably heard before, fiber deployment. The Proximus playbook is somehow different from what you have seen elsewhere. An ambition to cover 95% of the country with 70% ownership of the network and a tremendous focus on customer for maximum monetization, thanks to our three to five year head start versus our competitors.
Indeed, as we supercharge our fiber program, we gain that crucial product superiority, which has been missing for years on the fixed market. Second, we also talk about how we are on the path to change the overall profile of Proximus Group through the internationalization and the softwarization of our activities. Besides our traditional domestic activities centered on our networks, we now have a broad, solid international presence built on asset-light, global, and fast-growing platforms. Taken together, these two elements, domestic product superiority and internationalization, allow Proximus to find the right balance and create value at both medium and long term. To start my intro session, I'll begin with a look back on the strategic cycle that ended last year, Inspire 2022. I'm extremely proud because we delivered on what we had planned.
Three years ago, we committed to turn the group back to growth, we did it. Before sharing more details on the Inspire performance, let's quickly come back to that new footprint of our group. A unique profile within the industry, which is based on two complementary assets. First, we have our Benelux leg, which represents 75% of the group revenues today. There, the focus is on building and owning the best low latency and high-speed networks, expanding further our large customer base, thanks to a portfolio of strong brands and relentless customer focus. We have our second leg, our international segment. There, we operate in high-growth global markets. Furthermore, the capital intensity is extremely low, as the assets are mainly delivering software solutions for enterprises. Today, this segment represents already 25% of our revenues.
It will definitely become more and more important for the group in the years to come. We have a dedicated session on the international segment later. Indeed, the playbook here is slightly different from what we do in our traditional domestic activities. I will first start with a look back on the last few years, taking each of those two legs, one at a time. Let's start first with how we completely turned around our domestic business. Here, we selected five metrics that actually demonstrate the extent of the journey we have made. First and foremost, we accelerated our fiber rollout. We truly built a fiber machine which now reaches the speed of 10% additional coverage every year, hence providing Proximus with a massive competitive edge. Second, we drastically modified the way our customers access our products and services.
A concrete proof point is the NPS increments, the Net Promoter Score increments achieved. We multiplied them by almost three as compared to 2019 levels. By leveraging our network and a renewed word of mouth, we sustained a super strong commercial momentum that led to a significant increase of our customer base. One number to just give you a sense of the magnitude of that. Our postpaid customer net growth over the last two years has reached levels that we have not seen in around 10 years. We delivered all that in the context of the COVID pandemic, and specifically for Proximus, just following a heavy social plan. Nevertheless, we managed to rebuild a constructive social dialogue while increasing our employee engagement to levels that are higher than those we had before the social plan.
Last but not least, we also delivered on our green ambitions to reducing our CO2 emissions by 40%. At the same time, we doubled down on our international assets. As I took over in 2019, I decided to stop the divestment process that was ongoing. On the contrary, I chose to buy out the minorities of both BICS and Telesign at attractive terms. My objective was to ensure that our group was exposed to asset-light, fast-growing markets, as well as geographies with different dynamics than the Benelux. This was definitely a bold choice, but as shown clearly on those two charts, we turned around both businesses. They are now recording substantial growth rates.
Telesign, for example, delivered five consecutive quarters of growth in direct margin, resulting in Q3 in a 4% year-over-year growth. When we take it all together, domestic and international, over the last few years we get this picture which speaks for itself. We really delivered on a promise. We returned to growth. Let's now take a step back and assess together where we stand. As a matter of fact, Inspire 2022 laid the grounds and built strong foundations which are uniquely positioning us towards the future. Once more, let's analyze successively, sorry, our two segments. First, on the domestic side, as already touched upon, we secured undisputed product superiority and leadership for both mobile and fixed. In fixed, we ensure the multi-year first mover advantage as we offer the fastest technology on the market.
We recently launched our 10 Gbps offering, while all our competitors currently remain on an inferior, outdated technology. In mobile, we also have an edge. We acquired more spectrum than any of our competitors, enabling us to ensure a better mobile experience for our customers and that for the next 20 years. As you know, in our industry, everything starts with product leadership. It will allow us to grow in a telco market through gaining market shares, mostly in the North and increasing customer value. Jim and Anne-So we'll come back to this. Our customer experience advantage will allow us to continue winning back shares on competition in all regions from our main competitors. That's simple but super effective plan.
We'll roll out the best networks, we create the best user experience, and with that we extend and develop the value of our B2B and B2C customer bases. That's it for the domestic part. On the international side, we fully now own two companies which are superbly positioned to capture the strong growth of the markets on which they are operating. They both have a global footprint. BICS, for instance, has access to more than 5 billion mobile subscribers. Those two affiliates also have a strong and growing customer base. For example, eight of the top 10 global internet platforms are currently customers of Telesign. Finally, they both have strong competitive advantages. We'll come back to both with Joe and Matteo later today. We have very strong foundations, and they allow us to look to the future with confidence.
This despite a series of headwinds that will make our life a little more complex, such as inflation, a new entrant or potential infrastructure competition. Nonetheless, thanks to our assets, thanks to the unique position I just explained, I am sure and convinced we'll be able to amply compensate by capturing value from different opportunities. A more connected and globalized world, where digital communications and gigabit connectivity are every day more important. Fiber becoming the dominant network technology, not only in Belgium, but everywhere for the future, and hence giving us that competitive advantage I just mentioned. The growing importance of cybersecurity and data privacy exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. Both at domestic and international levels, we have numerous assets active in the cyber defense fields, and this is a substantial opportunity for the group. In summary, many changes for our company.
The end of Inspire strategic cycle and ongoing evolution to a more international group, a strong diversification of our activities. In parallel, a world that has massively evolved. COVID, Ukraine, inflation amongst many others that I don't need to detail to you. In that context, we felt it was the right time to develop not only a new strategy, but actually also to rethink our sense of purpose. We chose the following one. Boldly building a connected world that people trust, society blooms. This new sense of purpose really highlights what the new DNA of the company is. We build a world that is more connected, but we also take upon us to make this digital ecosystem more trustworthy. We come back here to the critical security and sovereignty questions. Further, we consider that our company has inherently a societal responsibility.
We must and we will play a broader role towards making a better world. That last element, boldness. We are bold in accelerating our fiber deployment. We were bold in acquiring full ownership of BICS and Telesign. We want to continue being bold. As a result, we called out on new strategic cycle bold2025. bold is hence the articulation of our ambitions for the next three years. It is a structured, comprehensive plan that will allow us to find the right balance in between capturing value both at medium and long term, both at domestic and international levels. As you can see, this new strategic framework is built around six pillars grouped into two categories. First, we have our strengths, the unique assets that form the foundation of everything we do as a company.
Our gigabit network, our technology assets, of course our people. With these enablers, we deliver various outcomes for our three stakeholders that form the basis of the next three pillars. Society, we act for it, are sustainable in everything we do. Our customers, we delight them with unrivaled experience. Of course our shareholders, for whom we grow profitably, locally and globally. We are convinced that this ambitious strategy and the detailed plan that underpin it will indeed deliver value. In domestic, we'll continue on a commercial momentum, exploit our first mover advantage in fiber, and mitigate costs with efficiency programs.
All that will translate into free cash flow recovery through a growing EBITDA as of 2024 and return to normalized CapEx levels. Then we further accelerate our growth in the international segment through doubling down in high single-digit growth markets, such as digital communications and digital identity, while expanding to new geographies. Our ambitions here will be to achieve high single-digit DM growth at low CapEx intensity. Hence, free cash flow contribution from international activities will become more and more significant for our group over the years. Let's now deep dive in a bold2025 strategy, and I will go briefly through the six pillars I just laid out. Let's start with the first one. Rolling out the first best gigabit network for Belgium. The ambition here is quite simple.
Ensure absolute product superiority both on fixed and mobile, hence become the reference gigabit network by 2025. We have the best position to achieve this. I already touched upon our competitive edges in fixed fiber head start in terms of capabilities, and that's super important in current market conditions and partnerships. 10 Gbps product superiority and an ambitious goal to cover 50% of the country by 2025, 95% longer term. In mobile, our greatest advantage is, of course, the large spectrum that we have acquired, which ensures we will continue to offer the best experience in the market. In fixed, our key differentiator is therefore fiber with three important numbers you should have in mind. 95% coverage by 2032.
We own 70% of the network, we achieve it with roughly 20% funded with our own CapEx. The most important element, though, is the current pace that we can reach with our fiber machine. Around 10% of the country annually, as previously mentioned. This will definitely help us minimize overbuild risk given the high rollout costs in the Belgian market. In mobile, we have one major ambition. We aim to cover 100% of the population with 5G by 2025. We also expand into new innovation areas such as slicing and low latency, while of course ensuring we limit the cost of the network through, for example, outphasing 3G as of 2024 and ramping up the benefits, sorry, of MWingz RAN consolidation ASAP. Second pillar of tech capabilities and assets.
I reckon that might sound like a bit of a complex slide. It reflects the journey that we have embraced to evolve from a telecom company towards a tech group. Through owning more software IPs going forward and creating a platform-centric techno stack to answer to the evolving needs of our customers and markets all over the world. As you can see, our telco business model is evolving into a digital ecosystem. Obviously, at the application level, but also notably at the level of the network and infrastructure resources. In short, all the assets of the group stack follow a softwarization transformation. On a national scale, through network and infrastructure softwarization. On an international scale, through BICS and in adjacent areas in apps through Telesign. We have one clear ambition.
Leveraging all the tech assets and capabilities of our group in order to foster synergies and offer the best portfolio of convergent solutions. Crucially, such evolution for our tech stack will also continue to low cost savings with 70 million EUR reduction in TCO by 2025. These decreases are actually driven by several factors. A simplified digital layer and refactored channels, a single offering chain for high-value products, also for the enterprise business, state-of-the-art data platforms, and a revamp of our private cloud environments. Coming back to the digital channels, an important element will be the streamlining of our e-sales and e-services channels, which will further improve customer experiences and enable an acceleration to e-sales and e-servicing over time. Our last enabler pillar will foster an engaging culture and empowering ways of working.
A key component of that is, of course, our agile transformation, which is well on the way and already produces value through simplification across all the organizations. Nevertheless, such a broad transformation is a long process and will reap incremental benefits as we progress along our journey. More customer sensitivity, reduction in time to market, and increments in employee engagement. I will now move to three next pillars. We also cover our three stakeholders, society, customers, and shareholders. First one, society. Indeed, our societal impact is at the core of our new sense of purpose. As a matter of fact, given our size in Belgium, given our history, given our DNA, given our influence on critical areas of citizens like, you know, digital inclusion, cybersecurity or cyber defense, or even more on sovereign, on sovereignty of the data infrastructure. We have a crucial role to play.
Especially in the troubled times we experience today, our society needs leaders. Proximus must and wants to take up that responsibility. We do this in multiple ways. Nurturing digital trust, combating digital divide, championing diversity and inclusion, and of course, fighting climate change, which is the topic of the next slide. First of all, we reconfirm our ambitious targets, becoming net zero by 2040 and fully circular by 2030. In terms of CO2 reductions, we already managed to significantly reduce our footprint by 40% in three years, but we will, of course, not stop here as we have a new target of 20% reduction by 2025. On the security side, we'll continue to work on our entire chain: devices, network, and data centers, and of course, our real estate, our facilities.
We are, by the way, one of the first operators globally to have its targets validated by SBTI, the Science Based Targets initiative, another proof of our seriousness in that domain. After society, let's now turn to our second stakeholders, our customers. Here one clear objective: We want to be number one in customer experience across all of our segments. We can actually be quite confident as we have a super good track record with strong improvements over the last few years. We nonetheless want to raise the bar even higher by 2025. We aim to achieve this thanks to a series of levers. First, a superior connectivity experience that fully leverages the power of fiber. By going digital-first for simple transactions while valorizing human contact when it matters, and finally, by incurring continuous improvements on customer feedbacks.
On top of these elements, we also want to improve customer experience by offering our customer platforms, which are two differentiators with many touchpoints across their digital life. Pickx, on the one hand, aims at becoming the next generation entertainment aggregator. With the help of second platform, Proximus+, which has an ambition to become the daily assistant of Belgian citizens. It already covers several verticals beyond telco, such as Fintech with our Neobank, mobility, thanks to 4411, the parking app that we fully own, or eHealth with Doktr, the first telemedicine solution in Belgium. With Proximus+, we're in fact building a stronger connection with our customers through developing seamless experiences across all those different services. Crucially, this is achieved based on the CapEx lack. The CapEx slide, sorry, model.
Innovation for our international customers is, of course, also at the core of what BICS and Telesign are doing every day. At BICS, recent product innovations include a no low-code customer engagement platform, which enhances cross-channel communication and customer experiences through flexible plugins that allow integration with websites, third-party CRMs, ERPs, help desk softwares, e-commerce platforms, and marketing tools. All this with zero or minimal coding. We also launched a 5G standalone roaming platform based on the principle of secure hub to streamline complexity, and which is sitting on a next-generation data roaming network, IPX, optimized by low latencies through local managed breakouts and integration of the cloud edges of this world.
We have other innovative tracks around eSIM for IoT or our MPN hub platform that provides seamless management of mobility within and across MPN locations, including breakouts to access to public networks at local, but also, more importantly, at global scale. For Telesign, as well, many product innovations. First of all, the self-service feature now allows businesses of any size to connect, protect, and defend their customer relationships with the same services Telesign already provides to the biggest, most sophisticated companies in the world. Another example is the Age Verify, which is a new service that helps enterprises and websites verify the age of the people trying to use their services. This is an important part of protecting teenagers from access to tobacco, alcohol, gaming, or other services that are restricted to adults.
Last example for Telesign is a Silent Verify product, which allows websites and application to protect their customers thanks to our SMS-based Multi-Factor Authentication, which is a streamlined user experience. That's for pillar on customers. We have one final pillar for our last stakeholder, our shareholders. For them, we obviously want to grow, both in our domestic and international markets. This page is probably a bit conceptual, but it shows how our international assets will significantly fuel our future growth. On the one hand, they allow us to expand geographically, and we can extend the reach of our portfolio of solutions. It's more. They also enable us to accelerate or move to software. It means evolving our activities towards high-growth areas. International expansion and softwarization both will be crucial for our group in the future, as I said before.
Nonetheless, as already mentioned, even though our core local telco markets has an overall slower growth profile, we still have a robust plan also to deliver value there as well. Let's first zoom on this one. I already shared some elements, but if I do summarize our strategy to grow in domestic telco encompasses four drivers. First one, fiber winbacks, increasing our market share, especially in Flanders. Second one, pricing power through a mix of ARPC uplift and pricing indexations. Third one, doubling down on a strong conversion strategy. Last one, generating stickiness thanks to our premium content. Furthermore, our multi-brand strategy is also a crucial asset, which allows us to acquire and protect across all segments. Above all, it enables us to quickly react to disruptive moves of the market.
Let's look now at a short video that visually shows the positioning of each of the three brands that you might know. Continuing on our domestic market, but moving to our second segment, our enterprise business. Some might say that Proximus has a true secret sauce as it comes to managing our B2B activities. There, again, the ambition for the coming three years is to even accelerate the trends that you have seen in recent quarters, and once again, to grow our revenues. We'll do it while maintaining a stable contribution margin. We will achieve this through following a study based on three axes. First, in line with what we have done successfully over the last years, we'll continue to drive smart telco value management through focusing on smart pricing, value accretive migrations on our fiber network, customer delight, and extensive upselling.
We will accelerate further in the Benelux IT market. Our priority areas are clear: cloud, security, and services. We'll, for example, expand our reach thanks to a standardized security. Standardized is super important word. Standardized security and cloud portfolio for small and mid-market size enterprises. We build on our strategic partnership with Microsoft to develop also the sovereign cloud offer. We'll continue to transform and innovate with our customers and partners. We are uniquely positioned to do this, and we are convinced our focus on end-to-end conversion services will further unlock value for us. IoT, digital workplaces, big data all require a modern connectivity layer that we provide with our gigabit networks. We'll soon provide you with more details on this enterprise strategy. This is for this afternoon.
Finally, as already mentioned several times, BICS and Telesign will contribute materially to our group growth story. Again, more on that in the dedicated session this afternoon with Matteo and Joe. That was the last slide that detailed all the pillars of our bold2025 strategy. I will now conclude with a few points that summarize our ambition. bold2025 is really a growth plan, a winning strategy that creates long-term value through several layers. First, the acceleration of a fiber rollout in Belgium, reaching 50% of population by 2025 and connecting more than 1 million customer lines by 2025. Second, achieving number one position in customer experience across segments, thanks to our product superiority and enabled by our agile organization transformation. Ensuring a commercial momentum in domestic, thanks to our gigabit network leadership and our IT ecosystem.
Developing international frontrunners, BICS and Telesign, in digital identity and digital communications to further unlock, sorry, group diversification. Lastly, become a force for good in society through nurturing digital trust, combating digital divide, and build a more sustainable world. Before we head for lunch, a final page which summarizes our bold2025 financial ambitions. We'll grow our domestic revenues and return our domestic EBITDA to the level of 2022 by 2025. We'll accelerate our international EBITDA, including a direct margin growth at high single digit CAGR. At group level, we will grow EBITDA as from 2024, with 2025 EBITDA slightly above the 2022 level. CapEx will return to normalized levels after a peak in 2023.
Our goal is to maintain a sound financial position by maintaining our net debt to EBITDA ratio between 2.5x and 3x by rebasing our dividend as from 2024. Finally, as a management team, we commit to long-term free cash flow growth trajectory. Thank for you, thank for your listening to that first part of the CMD. I think we are a little bit ahead of time, we can have a longer, you know, then a longer lunch break. I think we have to resume for our next presentation at 1:30 P.M. sharp. Thank you for listening.
Welcome back. Let's now start with our domestic activities and a session called Building and Monetizing the number one gigabit network for Belgium. We have structured this presentation in four major buckets. First, Geert will explain how we'll expand the deployment of our gigabit network. Jim will detail out how we leverage fiber product superiority to boost our commercial momentum. Just after that, Renaud will cover our ongoing ambition of long-term operational efficiencies. Finally, Mark will quickly go through the financial aspects, and will detail out the investment phases over this fiber investment. We start with Geert. Geert, floor is yours.
Thank you, Guillaume, and good afternoon to everybody. I will double-click a bit on our gigabit fiber deployment. Guillaume has said it, while we have already passed 1 to 3 million today, which is representing a bit more than 20% or 25%, ambition is to cover 50% in the coming 3 years and double that coverage by 2032 to 6 million cumulative homes, and that is about 95%. This space that you see there on that slide is only possible, thanks, of course, to our fiber engine, which is fully up and running, and which is giving us a head start. Let me first talk about the construction capacity. We have been having an experience, 6 years experience in fiber deployment. We have a long-lasting relationship with many, many construction companies out there.
This allows us, of course, to have high capacity secured to cover the massive ambitions, but also at good conditions. We know that we can deploy with high quality, but also at fair cost. This is, of course, giving as well, a lot of work to people in Belgium. About 6,000 people now working in fiber deployment. Deployment is more than pure technical program. It's also a lot about communication and collaboration. As such, we have a collaboration contract with more than 600 building promoters, which is representing 2/3 of all the new build in Belgium. Also with most of them, we have commercial agreements whereby we have the exclusivity to promote our fiber offers, and that, of course, helps us in the acquisition. We have other important stakeholders. We have, for example, cities.
Cities are crucial for a fluent deployment. We have with them proactive communication, upfront, good governance practice around works on public domain. We have constant alignment meetings, immediate corrective actions when that is needed. As such, we ensure, in fact, good relations that allow a rollout, which is smoothly, this in most cities, as planned or even better. Third stakeholder, the syndics. Syndics in Belgium is a pretty scattered population, we have about 3,500 registered syndics. We have created a dedicated team to in fact educate these syndics. It's about what are we going to do? How is it working that we enter into a building? Why do we do this? What are the legal aspects? We have full support of the syndic federations and even our trainings towards syndics, they are recognized as official training hours.
The fact that Proximus is also doing copper outphasing, meaning maximum 5 years after we deploy on public domain, we outphase the copper, is in fact a key argument for introducing as well the fiber in what we call the MDUs, the multi-dwelling units. Innovations. We did a lot of point-to-multipoint deployment so far, but now we have also massively started in point-to-point. This means we have a portfolio of solutions enabling us to opt for a best fit solution to maintain a kind of optimal cost benefit balance. We also started deploying in rural. With the German-speaking community, pretty rural area. Well, there we're now as well deploying on poles.
That is one, before we did it on façade, we did it in underground, but now we use as well pole methodology, which is an important way to be cost efficient. The poles, the ownership of the poles is sitting with the energy utilities. We have signed an important strategic partnership with ORES, and that is ongoing with RESA and Fluvius for the usage of the poles. The last element on this slide is about subsidies. We were granted, in fact, in 2022, the mass of the subsidies, and that is about EUR 45 million that we had that was for German-speaking community, but as well for other projects. The past years, we accelerated strongly. Guillaume referred to it. We did times two, times two and in 2022, we added an additional 100K.
What you see is that for our own rollout pace, and that is the dark purple block, we actually peaked in 2022. As from this year, it will slow down and the freed-up capacity will move entirely to the GVs. Talking about the GVs, they started truly working in the streets in 2022. You might say that the number there on this chart with respect to homes passed is not massive, and that is true, but that is essentially due to a change of topology from point to multipoint to point to point and some related process changes. Actually, on top of the few tens of thousands of homes passed they delivered, the GVs already brought fiber in front of more than 150,000 extra addresses.
They did a massive job already in the streets in Flemish as well as in Wallonia. It's in this year, 2023, that all those addresses will also become homes passed in batches as soon as what we call a POP will be installed. A POP, that is a sort of container where we put all our active equipment and where we connect that on the physical fiber. Of course, getting a POP in place, what does it require? You need to find land, you need to rent it, you need to acquire it, you need to launch building permits. That, as you can imagine, that takes some time. In the future, that is a step that is now done far ahead in the process, so this will no longer bring any delay.
Of course, we were as well hit by inflation. That is not magic. The good thing is that here on our own footprint, based on all continuous efforts, we were in fact able to largely neutralize the inflation impact. How we do this, that is a different scale, but it's of course, further learnings on network design, reducing the numbers of meters you have to deploy to get to a home passed. It is that optimal choice that we can have between point to multipoint, point to point, but also the façade underground poles, type of deployment. It's of scale and maturity, which enables us to have, of course, best supply conditions, but also for remote outliers. Sometimes when we do a project, fiber deployment here and there, some houses are very expensive to connect.
That we do through alternative technologies, and that is with fixed wireless access. Many innovations still coming as well. First innovation, Quantum on fiber, which brings a step change in secure communication. We have a small video, so you will see in a few minutes what Quantum means for us. Guillaume referred as well to softwarization of our networks and slicing. Network slicing, whether it's on your mobile asset or your fixed asset is a very nice example there that can enable, again, many innovations with customers, but also, again, ensure, for example, very secured special services. We're looking into further digitally twinning our network, which is in fact a replication in the virtual world of our physical network.
You can imagine that, at a certain moment in time, a technician will have a kind of augmented reality of the virtual network when he's doing an intervention. Mainly what we see now as well is with the AI that we put on top of it, that we can become extremely predictive. The broadness of predictiveness, but also, in fact, the preciseness of this, yeah, new AI technology upon our digital twin is really kind of very interesting and will for sure lead to more cost efficiency in maintenance. Of course, the network that we built today, you know that on that same production network, we already showcased 25 Gbps .
All the assets that are there physically built out there, it's not only for the 10 gig, it will as well be for the 25 gig, for the 50 gig, and for the 100 gig. Let's maybe look first at video to explain quantum a bit more into detail. We are confronted with increasing threats on privacy and security in the world. The current geopolitical context shows that critical data and infrastructure protection becomes even more crucial. Proximus' mission is not only to protect our own networks, but also the essential interests of our country and the privacy of our customers. That is why we want to invest in quantum safe communication. Thanks to its fiber optic network, Proximus will be able to offer quantum technology to its most sensitive customers.
How does it work? To prepare communication networks against certain future cyber attacks, Proximus is testing a new cutting-edge technology called Quantum Key Distribution. When two users want to exchange information securely, they do this by encrypting and decrypting their communication. This requires a secret key. This key should only be known by these two users and must be impossible to obtain by a third party. This is where Quantum Key Distribution comes in. It all starts with a photon, the tiniest particle of light possible in nature. One of its characteristics is that it can only be read once. Reading it changes its behavior. Using the peculiar behavior of photons, Quantum Key Distribution could create and exchange a fully randomized and unbreakable secret key between two users.
Because the photon can only be read once, any attempt to read the secret key by a third party eavesdropper will be detected immediately.
This is what it looks like in real life. Today we are at the Proximus lab, and that's probably the reason why you hear some background noise. What does it look like? We first have a pair of devices, and this first pair of devices is responsible for generation of the keys through random number generation and sending them over in a secure way to the other side. We constantly check on the monitor to see whether they have been transferred in a secure way or not. Once this is done, and once we've got confirmation, those devices will send the commands to a second pair of devices, which are the encryption managers. They will encrypt the data according to these keys that have been exchanged before. They encrypt the data and send them over to the other side.
This is just the beginning because the next step will be to verify whether this technology can be used over different types of fibers and different distances of fibers. Once that is done, we are ready to take it out into the real world and test it on our fiber network in Belgium, connect it to foreign fiber networks, and eventually connect it over satellite. What you see here is merely just the start of a new and exciting era. Stay tuned for more updates.
Proximus. Think possible.
Voila. An exciting era coming and, this was only a part of the innovations. Many others, it was not an exhaustive list. I would take too much time, and I don't wanna do this because I wanna hand it over to Jim to talk about the commercial momentum. Thank you.
Thank you, Geert, and welcome everybody also from my side. Fiber is for us really a game changer when it comes to the residential market for Proximus. Over the last 15 years, we have been faced with competition that technologically had better arms than Proximus with a coax network versus the copper network. Now finally with fiber, we can claim that product leadership. With the launch of our 10 Gb service at the end of last year, we can now offer speeds to our consumers that are 10x faster than the speeds you can get on the coax network. Now, what does this bring for the consumer? Just one example, but there are multiple examples.
When you think about downloading the latest full season of your favorite series, you can now do that in the blink of an eye. You no longer have to wait before you take a train, before you go to the fitness, before you go on holidays. It's just like that you have a full season downloaded on your mobile device. Of course, fiber brings much more than only more downstream. With COVID, we have also started to work more and more from home. One of the key characteristics of fiber is also a much better upstream capability versus coax technology.
Finally, fiber is low latency technology, which is typically also in the gaming segment, a really compelling argument to convince customers to come to fiber. What we want to do now is, as we are deploying fiber in Belgium, we want to engrave in the minds of every Belgian consumer and company that fiber is the best internet technology around, and that fiber is available at Proximus. We do this on the first side, of course, through our brand awareness campaigns, where in 2022, for the first time, we had national campaigns talking about the benefits of fiber for Belgian society on consumer side and on business side.
Of course, also all the innovations that Geert was talking about, like demonstrating the next capabilities of fiber with 25 Gbps , is also a way to continue to show and demonstrate that leadership. Finally, of course, also in the areas where we are deploying actively fiber, we have our commercial campaigns where we push Fiber Flex to consumers and convince them to take this solution. We are seeing positive results of all these efforts that we are doing. As you can see on the slide, already, the fiber awareness in Belgium is 89% of Belgians know about fiber, and 70% of our consumers associate fiber to the Proximus brand.
This is really key for us, and this is gonna be something that we're gonna continue to build in the coming months and years. While Proximus is the brand that we want to associate to fiber in the minds of our customers, of course, we also continue to execute on our multi-brand strategy. Proximus is our premium brand. It's a conversion brand focusing on multi-play bundles for families, and it will fully use the product leadership that fiber technology brings. Our premium solutions will be able to bring speeds up to 10 Gbps to the consumer, and this is the focus on the Proximus brand. We also have, of course, Mobile Vikings. Mobile Vikings that is targeted to consumers that are looking for data-centric internet and mobile offers.
It's more towards the cord cutter segment. There we focus on innovative experiences combined with good value for money. Finally, Scarlet is our low-cost brand. A low-cost brand where speed is not at the core of the value proposal, but where we really focus on no-frills experience. With these three brands, we aim to realize together with the business segment, 1 million fiber lines by the end of 2025. This is 1 year earlier than our previous commitments, and it also means that by the end of 2025, 45% of our Internet customers will benefit from this fiber technology. We are well on track to realize this target of 1 million fiber customers, thanks to our rigorous commercial execution.
On the first side, on our Fiber Flex portfolio, we are really building on that product leadership with speeds that are starting at 350 megabit per second, going up to 1 Gb and to 10 Gb with the U ltra Fiber solution. Of course, next to the connectivity part, we also offer a lot of appealing digital services like our Pickx entertainment platform, where we offer a bundled access of local and international content, but also a very convenient access to Disney+, to Netflix, which are actually also integrated in our commercial portfolio. Of course, we have Mobile Vikings and Scarlet to allow us to cover the full range of needs in the market.
As deployment has ramped up, we have also upscaled our commercial visibility to nationwide brand campaigns, combined, of course, with our continued regional commercial campaigns that we are doing on Fiber Flex. This is also the ambition, of course, not only to make sure that people in new fiber hoods are aware of fiber, but that we continue also to boost penetration in the existing fiber hoods where fiber has been available for some time. Also, our service engine has been geared towards fiber, but Renaud will come back on that later. Thanks to this rigorous commercial execution, we now see that we have a 2% point market share increase in areas where we have deployed fiber, and this 12 months after fiber has become commercially available.
Also in the space at which we are, which we are migrating our existing customers, we are also accelerating. In 2022, we are able to migrate 50% of our copper customers to fiber in less than 6 months. This is 50% faster than what we did in 2020 and double as fast as what we had in 2018. Of course, this is also the result of what I just explained before. We also use every interaction that we have with our customers to convince them to migrate to fiber. This is also, of course, important, when we think about our copper outphasing ambitions.
The faster we can migrate customers, the faster we can also outphase our copper network. When we look at the value that we are able to create with these customers, we see that we have a 7 EUR ARPC increase on fiber digital customers versus copper digital customers, and this is when we exclude promotions. When we include promotions, this uplift is still 4 EUR. Of course, it's logical in fiber customer base, we have much more younger customers, newer customers, so the impact of promotions on the fiber customer base is higher than on the copper base. That's logical that we have an impact on the ARPC on fiber as well. How do we create that value?
When you look at the Proximus fiber portfolio, there's a EUR 5 uplift between our copper portfolio and our fiber portfolio. On top of that, thanks to fiber, we are able to reintegrate speed as a differentiator in our portfolio. This means when you go from the entry tier, which is bringing 350 Mbps to the second tier, which is bringing 1 Gbps, this comes with a price increase of EUR 12. On top of that, you get other elements like a fixed line, additional Wi-Fi boosters. In fiber, you also get that speed increase. Then on top of that, which is not yet accounted in that EUR 7 ARPC increase with the launch of ultra-fiber, we now have a 10 Gb technology with a EUR 30 price premium on top of that.
Next to having a higher ARPC, we also see that our fiber customers are more satisfied with the products that we are offering them. We see a 7 percentage point better satisfaction when it comes to the speed of the internet connectivity, but we also see a 13 percentage point better satisfaction when it comes to the Wi-Fi experience that our customers are enjoying on the fiber network. This allows us to decrease the churn with 30% when we are comparing like for like in the aging of a customer, a copper customer with a fiber customer. How do we get to that 13 percentage point better customer experience on Wi-Fi? We have next to, of course, making sure that we bring that gigabit connectivity up to the home.
We all know that the Wi-Fi experience at home is really critical for the overall experience that as a customer you have on the connectivity. We have been working on bringing the best Wi-Fi service in the market. First of all, by making sure that on the hardware side, we use the latest Wi-Fi technologies, and we bring these to our customers. We have launched Wi-Fi 6, but also Wi-Fi 6E technology. This allows us to bring a combined 11 Gb Wi-Fi bandwidth to our homes, of course, with a capping of 4.8 Gb per user. A combined bandwidth that allows us to truly bring that multi-gigabit experience in every corner of the house. On top of that, we monitor and we steer proactively the Wi-Fi experience of our customers through data analytics and machine learning.
To make sure that you enjoy Wi-Fi also in your daily life, we make it easy for our customers to share Wi-Fi credentials, for instance, with friends and families with a QR code. We also help families to manage the screen time of devices connected to the Wi-Fi network. To finish off this part of the presentation, with our fiber and our Wi-Fi experience, we are really able to bring a superior conversion experience to our customers that is product leading in the market. We have also been able to lead the market in Belgium in rolling out 5G, which has helped us to create positive brand value in doing so. We have also secured our 5G leadership by acquiring significantly more spectrum than competition as well.
When it comes to our digital platform, Proximus Pickx, we have a superior experience with our Android TV decoder that gives a very convenient access to OTT applications. We actually also see that when we look at how customers are consuming all the services that we provide them. We see that on the latest technologies on fiber, on 5G and on the Android TV decoder, customers spend much more time on Proximus solutions than what they did before. There are some data here. For instance, you can see fiber customers consume in the residential segment 20% more data on their fiber line compared to copper. When it comes to 5G, we have 50% more mobile data usage on 5G customers versus average mobile data customers.
Finally, on our Pickx platform, when we look at Android TV, there is no difference in the consumption of local linear content, but we actually see that customers come to our Pickx platform to watch to Netflix and Disney+ rather than going to the digital platforms themselves. This is what we really want to realize, making sure that people spend time on the solutions that we bring them so that we create the value for them, that they are happy of being customers with Proximus. Of course, we also continue to execute our multi-brand strategy with Mobile Vikings and Scarlet. I will now give the word to Renaud, who will dive into the operational benefits of fiber.
Jim, good afternoon to all. Jim has explained the commercial momentum linked to fiber. I will deep dive on the structural efficiency from fiber network. This fiber network will be cheaper to operate versus a copper network. As you see the figure here, we estimate that more than a 50% reduction of cost to operate versus copper coming from 3 main opportunities. First, the self-install capabilities in fiber. This, certainly after the first connection to the customer, reducing the cost by EUR 70 per installation. Of course, there are also structurally benefit in the reduction of repair costs thanks to much lower order repair costs and to less in-home interventions, thanks more stable product and more proactivity in the monitoring.
On the top of this, the outphasing of the copper network will allow to further reduce our maintenance and energy costs. We'll also avoid huge investment to maintain and upgrade our copper network. This I will first go in more detail for the self-install case. This will boost progressively the self-install use case with fiber because first it's the best solution for many customers. This there is no need for appointment. We can deliver the material via bpost and activate the customer in less than 3 working days. It will free up capacity also to accelerate our migration, and it decrease the installation cost up to 80% by EUR 70 per customer.
This then you see that with fiber we can boost the self-install capabilities, especially when the first connection is done because we can see remotely if everything is okay, we can avoid outdoor intervention. This we estimate that when fiber will be fully deployed, we can have more than 80% of self-install. I will deep dive now on the repair cost. This each time a customer is migrated from copper to fiber, we already observe today a significant improvement of our repair cost. Just on the graph on the left slide, you see directly the fact that we can reduce by a factor for the outdoor repair from copper to fiber. This meaning a significant reduction of the average repair cost for customer.
We will continue to improve this repair cost because the technology is more stable, and we will also decrease the number of indoor intervention. As explained by Jim, we can also monitor the different device at home to offer the best experience in a proactive way. You will see in this graph that the acceleration of our fiber investment will also allow to accelerate the speed of saving because we'll not maintain two networks in parallel. You see on the graph the number of copper home passed decreasing to zero in 2035. This with this acceleration of copper phase out, this we have five years now between the start of the network built to the full decommissioning of a copper network.
We'll continue to work on this to industrialize our process to migrate from copper to fiber and to accelerate the copper decommissioning. It's important because it will allow us to save a lot of cost. You see that the fiber is fully deployed. We have more than EUR 120 million saved on a yearly basis, coming from less cost in customer operation, but also significant benefit in power and in maintenance. We will also avoid huge investment in copper because if we have to maintain at long term the copper network, it means we have very old generation copper cable which needs to be renewed. We will avoid this kind of investment, and we estimate that we can avoid under EUR 30 million a year for the copper renewal.
We will also avoid the one-shot investment linked to the upgrade of the VDSL platform towards 35 MHz. It's the one of avoided cost you see in this slide. As Geert has mentioned, we have also a lot of innovation in customer operation like in network. I will now deep dive on three use cases which will allow to further reduce our cost but also to increase the customer experience. The first one is the Proximus digital assistant, today fully deployed for the chatbot on all digital channel. We are working now on a voice bot to replace the classic interactive voice response to allow to detect the customer intent, to automate different use cases and to, when needed, to redirect the customer interaction towards a human intervention with a human touch.
We have also AI in the field with image recognition. We can use image recognition for a lot of use cases to improve the quality of the work, to check the bins with the partners, but also to have a faster damage identification of a cable. Last but not least, we are also using AI in all the workforce management to promote the next best action to detect and recommend the kind of technician to allow to do the intervention in the first and right way. There's a lot of future opportunity linked to AI, this in customer operation to further improve the cost but also to improve the customer experience. I will now give the floor to Mark, who will explain just the long-term free cash flow benefit to shareholders.
Thanks, Geert, Renaud, Jim, for explaining our fiber strategy today. Let me now touch on the investment thesis here for fiber at Proximus. There are many fiber stories in Europe today. We here at Proximus, we believe we have a unique, a different fiber story. Our ambition, as Jim set out earlier, is cover 95% of homes passed in Belgium. We're already 20% of the way through there. We're adding 10% a year. That's a really great pace. We have long-term ownership secured at around 70% through our arrangements that we've agreed with our joint ventures. We believe that we've optimized the capital deployment with 20% of CapEx on our balance sheet, with the rest being funded through our joint ventures through a mix of debt and equity, which I will come to.
The creative nature of our fiber investment is realized across multiple levers. First of all, market share gains. Jim alluded to it. We're already seeing 2 percentage point gains in deployed fiber areas 12 months after we've deployed them. The ambition is to get to mid-single-digit market share gains. Fiber has a significant impact on keeping our customers happy, with proven early evidence of reduced churn. Here again, long term, we ambition to reduce churn by over 30% compared to our copper network. Customers are willing to pay additionally. Again, Jim, you saw the slide for fiber product, especially given the way that we work and we live today. Our long-term ARPC target is 7 EUR. Again, early evidence is very supportive of that number.
Finally, of the top-line value drivers, we're an open network, and although we have 30 wholesale customers on our fiber network, on our fixed network today, the opportunity to come to agreements with the larger players or providers in the market provide a significant path to incremental value, we believe. On the cost side, Renaud demonstrated that we have material cost benefits. Self-installation versus technical installation are 80% less expensive. Fiber re-repair efficiency can deliver 40% cost reduction, and copper phase out will deliver material cost savings in power and maintenance of up to EUR 250 million annualized in regime. When it comes to networks, we have always been very clear that we fundamentally believe in ownership of our network. Why?
The gain to gain ownership economics, the synergies of operating network with the servco, and the importance that Jim also touched on is around social security, the sovereignty of networks in the future. With the agreements we have in place, we will come to own around 70% of our fiber network here in Belgium. That ownership level will be achieved at a very low cost with the purchase of 2 shares of our, each of our joint ventures. We have the optionality in the North, where we have the ability to purchase a further 10% of the Flanders network. Let me turn to the JV structures. Let me highlight a few of the key points that I think are important to understand about the joint ventures that we've put in place.
Firstly, we have agreements in place today already commercially scaling for Fiberklaar in the North, Unifiber in the South, and GoFiber in the German-speaking community. Our discussions with the Belgian consortium partners on more rural joint ventures are progressing very well. We expect them to land by the end of summer 2023. The partners we have chosen bring capital, expertise, and allow us to build those networks at a commercialized pace that we think is, you know, gives us a significant advantage. The capital structure we believe is optimal for such a initiative where we broadly fund the joint ventures with a debt level of around 50-70 percentage points during the construction phase. As discussed in the previous slide, long-term ownership is secured in agreements at immaterial cost. Let me take a couple of minutes on this slide.
This slide represents the standalone free cash flow profile of our fiber investment program over the short, medium, and longer term. Firstly, I would like to assure you that the return or IRR of this program is material above our WACC even given current financing situations. In the short term, free cash flow is obviously negative as we invest on our own balance sheet and commence the ramp-up of equity injections to support the joint venture build phase. Although the monetization is going really well as we migrate and win share, as Jim alluded to, this does not outweigh the initial investments in the period 2022 through 2025. In the medium term, we will deliver positive free cash returns thanks to a more commercialized fiber network, higher network utilization, and an on-balance sheet CapEx that starts to reduce material.
Long term, we will see significant free cash flow contribution as the fiber network is fully commercialized, investment period is behind us, no additional equity injections are required and the dividends start to commence from the JVs. We are building the best fiber network in Belgium efficiently, effectively, and at pace. We'll take advantage of that network by using multiple levers to monetize the top line, also to realize the efficiencies that come along with being a fiber-only network in the long term, resulting in a long-term value creative investment for our shareholders. I'll conclude there, I'll hand over to Anne-So to take us through the business section of our bold2025 strategy. Thank you.
Good afternoon, everyone. I'm extremely pleased to be able to share with you some insights on our business activity here at Proximus. What we'll do is I'll first give you some realizations, but most importantly, I'll give you some insights as well about our growth ambitions for the years to come. As you probably remember, in our 2020 CMD, we took 2 commitments. We said we would be back to growth in 2023. Indeed, we had foreseen to be flattish for 2021 and 2022, and that we would grow our share of IT revenues. I am very happy to stand here today and say that those 2 promises we not only delivered, but over-delivered as we returned to growth 1 year earlier than planned.
Indeed, our business revenues remained stable from 2020 to 2021, and grew from 2021 to 2022 in a challenging environment. The drivers behind this strong top-line performance are both telco and IT. On telco, we were able to successfully grow mobile and fixed data, and we also experienced a positive impact on our fixed voice business because of the sanitary crisis. In IT, we witnessed a very strong performance in cloud and managed services, which helped organically grow our IT revenues. In 2022, we also witnessed the positive impact from the partial IT products backlog being delivered. When you also look at the proportion of our telco versus IT in our total revenue, what you see is that we've been able to keep the proportion of telco revenues flat whilst growing our IT share in total revenues, which is fully reflecting our ICT convergence strategy.
You may ask, how did we realize this success? There's 5 unique assets that I thought I could give you some insights on. First of all, our strong brand. 70% of the business customers know us for our ICT solutions, according to the ICT awareness study that we run on a regular basis. This study also indicates that half of the corporate customers prefer Proximus as their so-solution provider. We've also been able to establish a very broad and deep customer reach. We've established relationships with 88% of the B2B decision makers through our direct sales force, but also through our wide indirect partner channel of 100+ indirect partners. These indirect partners are a mix of telco, IT, and ICT expert partners, and they offer personal touch and ensure Proximus' local anchoring and service, essentially for our high small enterprise and SMB customers.
Third asset is our full-scale partnership ecosystem. It's particularly important for us for three reasons. First of all, it provides an end-to-end offering for customers by strengthening our core complementary solutions, such as Microsoft, for example, or HCL for our cloud offerings. It also provide us with learning and skilling opportunities such as, for example, the sovereign cloud that we're building with Microsoft's Confidential Compute. Three, it enables us to tap into revenue pools of adjacent domains. The fourth, I would say, unique asset is the fact that we've also been investing, and we house a rich pool of scarce and very much sought-after expertise, which we build to our customers, either through one-shop consultative services or through our managed recurring services portfolio. These are industry-leading experts that drive today's innovation within ICT with our customers. Last but not least, our portfolio.
Our portfolio combines solutions with exhausting services offerings and built as our unique ICT value proposition. For example, if a customer wants to think about its cloud strategy, we're able to provide consultative services, telling them which data should go on which cloud, whether private cloud or public cloud, how we're able to orchestrate it, and how we're able to develop a technology roadmap that enables that. The installation services enabling that deployment roadmap. Last but not least, if the customer wishes to do so, we're able to actually manage and optimize those services through the life cycle of the contract. Where are we going next? Our ambition for the next three years. We aim to continue to grow our revenues, driven by the growth in IT revenues whilst managing the telco decline, and this whilst maintaining a stable contribution margin. Let me dissect a little bit here.
First on IT. We aim to increase our revenue proportion to more than 35%, driven by growth in strategic domains such as cloud and security. This will be realized by our industrialized portfolio and our partnerships with HCL and Microsoft for sovereign cloud and others. We also do not only want to grow, but we also want to grow, increase our own market share. We have the objective to grow faster than the market. From a telco perspective, we continue to monitor the declining market, but thanks to our convergent IT and telco strategy, our objective is to decline less than the market. As a result of this convergence, we aim to have a stable contribution margin. Contribution margin is your revenues minus your cost of goods sold, minus your direct OpEx.
Your direct OpEx is the OpEx that you build to your customers while working with them on specific business projects. We mainly use a contribution margin for IT as direct OpEx is more than 8% linked to IT versus a capital extensive telco business. Our future growth will be fueled by three strategic pillars. We will continue to drive smart telco value management. We are historically a telco player, and we will continue to manage our connectivity assets with excellence. Second, IT is our growth engine. We will strongly focus on cloud, on security, and on our services. If we take our full security and cloud value chain end to end, it will drive more than 60% of our IT growth by 2025.
By combining our technology-driven portfolio, our expertise, and our open ecosystem of partners, we continue on innovating to get today together with our customers. Indeed, thanks to our platform-based ICT building blocks, we co-create tomorrow's business models. Let me go through each of those pillars one by one and give you a little bit more insight and detail as to actually how we operationalize them. First of all, smart value management within telco. We've shown extremely good resilience thanks to smart pricing. For example, we actively steer mobile contract value. We smartly monitor and optimize the value of the contract through its life cycle. Let me give you an example. When we renew a mobile contract, we might see discounts and park downgrade. However, nine months later, we might be selling a park extension.
Two months later, we might decide to, with the customer, to upsell to an engaged PAX, which is the leasing of mobile devices, which again, is threefold revenue. Here, as you can see through the life cycle of the contract, we're actually able to steer the value of the contract for the customer. Our data-driven pricing algorithms are also helping us to maximize our ARPU. How? It provides us with customer usage patterns, historic contract data, discounts, peer pricing, et cetera, and that enables us to provide proactive pricing in a data-driven manner to each of the different verticals that our customers belong to. Then smart price increases. We've successfully increased 70% of our telco revenues mobile and fixed. Second, ax is the v-value accretive migrations. What does that mean? Well, first of all, we proactively migrate customers.
For example, in the fixed-voice market, we see the fixed-voice market declining, yet we show resilience thanks to proactively migrating our customers to new voice solutions in the cloud, such as Microsoft Teams or Operator Connect. Fiber is also critical for our enterprises. Why? It enables them to do process automation, it enables them to do hybrid working, drive operational excellence, et cetera. Today, 70% of zonings is covered with fiber. Customer delight. The quality of our telco solutions and customer self-serving web and app options drive customer delight across the boards. Let me give you maybe a few examples. Our MPLS solution, which is commercially known as Explore, has, historically speaking, been able to have an NPS which is higher by plus 11 points of other telco solutions.
What we're able to see is that we have a contained uptick of SD-WAN because there's a limited opportunity of customers to optimize cost in Belgium, the ratio being much lower in Belgium versus other countries. Last but not least, we've also enriched our digital web and application portal with +56% active users versus 2019, and our new self-servicing capabilities resulted in 6 x more admin self-service requests. It doesn't stop there. For the future, we aim to have a higher share of our active users and self-servicing requests with also a boost of our e-sale shares and e-billing, so electronic billing to drive sustainability. Up-selling. As I've mentioned before, we have a wide variety of professional services where we provide strategic, advisory, and technical consulting to our customers, such as the cloud services portfolio that I've mentioned earlier.
As we are an ICT service provider, we complement our telco solutions with IT solutions, either in an end-to-end convergent or in an OTT manner. Next, if we look at our IT, our growth engine, I think here four topics that I wanted to focus on. First of all, expanding our IT reach. We ensure that we have the IT solutions that are tailored to our various segments, including our smaller customers. Here, we provide a standardized solution enabling our small customers to access simple security solutions such as Managed Detection and Response. We also aim to provide SMEs with a digital security advisor that guides them in improving their cybersecurity maturity and resilience. We also enable SMEs to run their applications in the cloud.
Second, to give you an example, we have what we do here with the Federation of Notaries in Belgium, where we offer modular packages that notaries can then build depending on their size and needs. The size and needs on connectivity, on security, what teleworking solutions do they need, and these solutions are supported by a dedicated help desk. 95% of notaries in Belgium are already implemented at this solution. Second of all, partnerships. I alluded how valuable partnerships are in our strategy for the last three years, and they continue to be very much so in the next three years. First of all, we will be launching our sovereign cloud offering with Microsoft. It's very critical for the Belgian end market, also in Luxembourg.
It aims at providing customers with full sovereignty while giving access to features usually available only on the public cloud, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, et cetera. We will also be continuing on working with HCL, where the partnership doesn't just touch cloud, but also other areas such as workplace and housing. To give you an example of what we do here with a customer, I've, we have the logo of BAM Interbuild, which is the biggest construction company, based in Antwerp, where here we've migrated them to our Proximus Fusion Cloud hybrid offering, and we host their IT in a pay-as-you-use manner, whilst providing as well the security and the connectivity to their clouds. Next up, portfolio innovation. Here, there's two major technological changes that I thought I would inform you about. First of all, from an on-premise security to security in the cloud.
SecaaS, our Security as a Service offering in the cloud, means that we replace currently on-site protection by cloud-native protection solutions and extend the protection from on-site and Proximus data centers to public data centers. From SD-WAN to SASE. With SASE, borders between network and security blur. It's an emerging offering that combines connectivity capabilities with comprehensive network security functions in a cloud-based approach. Here we have the example of a banking customer in Belgium called Argenta. Here we've delivered the most important and the largest security managed service in the cloud solution with Managed Detection and Response and vendor management services, both residing in the Proximus cloud. We also provide professional and managed services.
Last but not least, SecaaS, we of course, are always looking at upselling in our existing customer base, whether through our consultative services portfolio, through Security as a Service, which is a worry-free as-a-service outsourcing model, or cloud-as-a-service, or many others. Here you have an example of Sibelga, where we provide full care security support solution with complementary engineering services. Three is the fact that we also differentiate by providing selected ICT services on top of our gigabit network. This is what our strategy look like. The foundation of all our services is our gigabit network with 5G and fiber. On top of this connectivity layer, what you see is we offer ICT products and solutions, IoT, digital workplace, analytics, AI, cloud and security. We offer these services both in a convergent way by combining IT and telco blocks, such as, for example, 5G, Edge, and IoT.
We can also offer them independently from the underlying infrastructure, and that's what we mean with OTT, i.e., we deliver security and network control completely independently of the connectivity layer. To help our customers build use cases of the future leveraging our gigabit network, we set up innovation hubs. These enable our customers to co-create and test use cases leveraging 5G. We've set up different hubs with different partners such as A6K, Fabriek Logistiek, Howest, or UZ Brussel, enabling us to have concrete use cases in the areas of logistics, manufacturing, et cetera. In the video on the next slide, what you will see is what we've done in Fabriek Logistiek.
Fabriek Logistiek is a demo center in Ghent, which enables us to, via Mobile Private Network, ask our customers to come and test different use cases in the e-commerce area or actually in the warehousing area. Here, what you will see in the video is a proof of concept that we've done with DroneMatrix, where thanks to image label recognition and a 5G MPN, a drone is able to navigate within the warehouse and manage stock. This example shows how we as a company can combine various ICT building blocks, the 5G network, the cloud, the analytics, and the artificial intelligence. I'll run the video for you.
This smart use case shows not only that we can apply this for the logistics center, but we can also use drones for all sorts of different use cases, thanks to our 5G technology. Actually in the Port of Antwerp, we also do things like inventory maintenance, but also in health. This is a very important use case for us, you see that we don't only look at logistics and warehousing, we also look at other verticals where we see the need and opportunity to unlock new opportunities and drive a smarter, more connected, and data-driven world. You will see here the entertainment industry first. With this example, we won at the Broadcast and Media Project of the Year, an international recognition for video contribution next-generation we-network.
We delivered the first rate connectivity setup, thanks to our fiber and 5G network, where we also equipped our mobile cameras with 5G. And for the sporting fanatics amongst you, and specifically football fans, what did it mean for them? Well, it meant that they could experience a live football match with very high-quality images whilst the video assistant referees could actually look at the video recordings during the match and make sure that the penalties were the correct ones. In another vertical, we use 5G and we test 5G is in healthcare and everything that's linked with public and safety services. Here you see an example of where with the University Hospital of Brussels, we created the connected ambulance of the future, as inter-hospital transport can pose a challenge.
We built and tested a fully connected and well-equipped ambulance with IP cameras to deliver the best aid in challenging circumstances. What does it mean? It means that assistance or telemedicine is made possible through the Proximus 5G connectivity, where from a distance, a doctor who is at the hospital can actually view the situation that's happening on the field with the first line support. They can assess the situation and assist the first aid, e.g. check vitals or. This is a very successful use case, as you said, Brussels will organize a launch event in 2023. Hopefully, those examples have shown you how much we've been able to co-create and build with our customers using the 5G technology of tomorrow, but mainly also of today.
If I were to summarize, what are the 3 takeaways I'd like you to keep on top of mind? First of all, we will continue to manage our telco value in a smart and sustainable way. Our DNA connectivity will be the ground layer for us to innovate together with our customers as we create new cases and enable new technologies such as Internet of Things, cloud integration, Security as a Service, Edge, and so much more. Second of all, IT is our growth engine and will be strongly driven by our cloud solutions, a field in which, as we've hopefully been able to demonstrate, we continue to pioneer, scale innovation and grow our share. Also our security solutions, in which we already lead today and will continue to leverage our wild pool of experts and end-to-end value proposals with complementary service.
Last but not least, we will continue to excel by executing on our rigorous transformation plan. That transformation plan touches upon the transformation of our people, our portfolio, our tools, and our processes. With all of these, we will continue to be the leading Belgian Benelux ICT service provider. This being said, I will hand over to Guillaume, who will introduce the next session on our international expansion with Telesign and BICS. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Anne-So. We still have two sessions before wrapping up, and the next one covers our international expansion, as already said by Anne-So. I already hinted at this topic during my intro. Let's now deep dive into how international allows us to evolve towards fully the profile of the Proximus Group. In that perspective, Joe and Matteo, in that order, will provide insights into the 22 performance of both businesses, both Telesign and BICS. I will then conclude this session with a few words. Joe, I think the floor is yours.
Great. Thanks so much, Guillaume. I'll spend a few minutes talking about the road ahead at Telesign and a little more about what we do. Before we go there, though, I'd like to do a quick recap of 2022 and some of the great progress we've already made at Telesign. It was a very strong year that created a terrific foundation for the future at Telesign. Our expected revenues for 2022 in excess of EUR 450 million. Very stable net revenue retention of about 124%. Once our enterprise customers, I'll talk more about in a few minutes, sign up for Telesign, they tend to stay and they tend to spend more year after year. Direct margin was over EUR 100 million for the year.
Our sales bookings, I was extremely excited about, were actually up about 81% year-over-year, with more than 60% of our bookings coming from our higher margin digital identity business. Very exciting. Number of employees at Telesign continued to move up from about 507 to in excess of 700 employees as we're really finding those data scientists and skilled salespeople across the world that we need to fuel our growth. Some of the highlights that I was particularly proud of were some great mentions in worldwide analyst reports from Gartner, Forrester, and some of the others. Rebranding of Telesign around continuous trust in the digital economy being a big part of what we're doing.
I was extremely pleased that Telesign was named one of the great places to work in the United States in 2022. Just a very, very nice achievement. New product innovations as we launched our self-service product that Guillaume mentioned earlier. An actual ability for a smaller, small to medium-sized business or even an individual developer to access the same digital identity and customer engagement tools through a self-service portal that we offer to some of the biggest customers in the world. Silent verification, age verification, and Telesign healthcare, the ability to actually interact with healthcare customers in support of U.S. and many other regulatory environments around the world safely and securely.
Just something that really, really is helping a lot of our customers. You see some of our new major customer wins across the bottom of this slide from Alibaba, Gojek, and many, many others. Okay. What does Telesign do? I know we don't talk too much about it here. I wanted to give a brief tutorial on some of this before we go back to some of the growth vectors for the future. You probably interact with Telesign multiple times in a day, if you know it or not, as you're living your life online. On social media, interacting with financial services through your mobile device, online gaming, enterprise software, and beyond, Telesign is there connecting, protecting, and defending all of the interactions you have throughout your day.
When you're signing on to social media, Telesign is there in the background making sure that it's really you, really your mobile phone, and not a bot or someone that's stolen your digital identity. Same thing when you're signing in through fintech, where they're making sure that it's really you, not someone who's stolen your SIM card or has created some other kind of cyberattack. Going down, down through each and everything that you do online, Telesign is there in the background, making sure the biggest brands and their consumers are protected and yet easy. How do we do all that? Well, I think of it very much across these four use cases.
Any time an enterprise, an application, or an e-commerce site wants to have a relationship with a consumer, with someone with a mobile phone or with a web browser, 4 things have to happen during the life cycle of that relationship. Starting down on the bottom left, first of all, when you go to sign up for an account, when you download a new application, or you go to a site on the web, there has to be a secure onboarding. We have to actually make sure that it's really you, really your mobile phone, not someone with your digital identity, and yet we've got to do that very, very easily. If we have to ask the end user 10, 15 questions to establish their identity, they'll simply abandon the process.
With Telesign and our worldwide information and artificial intelligence, we're able to be sure with just a couple of questions that it's really you, making it easier and safer than it is with many other systems. Once you've established an account, we need to make sure that we have account integrity. Every time the end user on their mobile phone or from a web browser wants to reach out to the website, or the website wants to reach out to them, we need to make sure that it's really still Joe, still Joe's mobile device. Once again, no account takeover attempts. Telesign, once again, does this extremely well for users in over 190 countries across the world.
Once we have identity fully established, we have to be able to engage the customer. The customer needs to be able to securely message the enterprise. The enterprise has to be able to message the customer over text messaging, voice, WhatsApp, Viber, and many other systems. Once again, Telesign has them covered. Then, of course, lastly, any time something of value is being exchanged through the mobile device, so this could be paying for a taxi, paying for lunch, or exchanging a digital good on a gaming platform, Telesign's there to help in the background ensure that both parties and both mobile devices are really who they're supposed to be. Who are some of the people we do it for?
Once again, while we deliver to consumers in virtually every country around the world, we're doing this on behalf of enterprises. The enterprise companies that actually buy from Telesign are global. Over 65 different countries that we have paying customers in. About 30% of our revenues come from outside the United States. I already mentioned we have about 700 employees around the world making this happen. Blue-chip customer base Guillaume mentioned earlier. Eight of the 10 largest brands on the Internet are using Telesign at scale every single day, along with about 1,700 other companies that are paying Telesign every single day. 137% net revenue retention on average. 124% the last year or two. We have a strong technical moat to keep us out in front.
About 35 patents in digital identity and Multi-Factor Authentication, and we're verifying over 21 billion identities per year at this point. The market opportunity for Telesign remains large. On protecting end users, one of the things that I'm so passionate about one in every four account creation attempts last year was a fake. Without Telesign there, those are needless account creations where enterprise resources are being stolen. The attempts to actually log on as a legitimate user are up 300% over the last couple of years, and 86% of us have been a victim of some level of identity fraud or another. With Telign, we can connect, protect, and defend all of these interactions and make the digital economy work the way we'd like it to. Communications fraud is becoming a huge problem.
IRSF fraud attempts, International Revenue Share Fraud, is now an $8 billion a year problem. Each and every attack averages about $50,000 in losses for vendors around the world. This has gone up 6x over the last 10 years. Once again, Telesign can integrate, massively reduce all of this, and restore safety to communications. Messaging efficiency, another huge use case for Telesign. About $3.5 billion of messaging is being paid per year by vendors for messages they're asked to deliver, but they're actually either fake or undeliverable. With Telesign, we can make sure those messages are deliverable, they get to the right person in every country around the world by actually checking their identity and the likelihood that they're deliverable before we ever even try.
Our strategy going forward is underpinned by four growth pillars. First of all, it's a growing market for us. As we all continue through digital transformation using our mobile devices and using online services for more and more of what we do, the market grows very, very well, and Telesign is gonna continue growing with the market or even above. Value chain expansion. We find even more places that Telesign can get involved to protect every interaction that we're doing. There's new use cases around privileged access management, document verification. Literally, every place somebody is accessing a service from their mobile device, there's a role for Telesign to play in making sure that it's secure and easy. I already mentioned moving into new use cases and new customer segments.
Our self-service tool that's allowing us to quickly get into smaller businesses. Other verticals like healthcare that I mentioned earlier, just a great expansion. We're also expanding geographically. We're rapidly building out our sales teams worldwide to continue capturing more and more business outside of the United States. I mentioned the self-service portal. This is really exciting. We were already offering all these services to the biggest companies in the world, but we launched in December of last year, 60 days ago, the ability to have these very sophisticated messaging and security products through a self-service for small to medium-sized business. We've already had more than 2,800 trial accounts and 130 smaller paying customers sign up.
This really, I think is a validation that this is gonna be a very nice addition for us going forward. It enables people to try and to try very quickly and then actually purchase SMS, PhoneID, all these different products to make sure that we have the right stuff, that we have the right people, each and every time somebody signs on to a to a website. Expect more to come on this as we add more features to it and really scale this through 2023. We feel like we're on the right track to deliver our ambitions and to really shift towards digital identity. Our mix is already moving from the core messaging business that is still very important to us. Towards digital identity.
Just a year or two ago, we were at 47% digital identity that our customers were purchasing. Already in the third quarter, this was up to 62%. We feel like our revenue growth and our margin growth is right on track for where we were trying to go. With that, I will hand it over to Matteo. Matteo?
Good afternoon, everyone, happy new year to all. Thank you, Joe, for handing over to me. My objective today is to tell you a bit the transformation story around BICS and the steps ahead, of course, together with our customer, our partner and our shareholder, Proximus. In a nutshell, few numbers, of course, we're talking about an expectation of 2022, but some numbers are pretty clear. Just maybe a couple of comments. BICS as an organization is truly global. We employ 50 nationalities around the world. For us, you know, the global footprint is also a cultural footprint, so we are very proud of that. Thanks to that, we're actually able to retain a lot of customers for a long time. Our customer relationship are very sound based on mutual trust. We often call them partners rather than customers.
This philosophy is also now moving with us towards the diversification in the digital enterprise. Another element which I would like to flag, which some of you knew already, we are still talking about a fairly CapEx-light business because we're highly transactional, okay? BICS last year had about 30 billion transactions excluding signaling for roaming. It's a good platform of scale. One element which is new to you that we have mentioned to you in the past disclosure is our revenue, our revenue growth into the enterprise space. Essentially for enterprise, we call digital players, hyperscalers, institutions, and any enterprise that is going through the digital transformation.
Another element in terms of product innovation, as Guillaume already mentioned, we're very proud of making some interesting and important steps in the next generation of roaming, which we'll be dealing about not only amongst telcos, but amongst many, many other brands, thanks to democratization of mobile technology. Also, we are probably on the eve of the massive IoT, thanks to also eSIM and iSIM, even more importantly. Of course, we are moving towards more software embedded into our communications. I'll come to that in a minute. First of all, just in a nutshell, What is BICS? We are known to be, of course, a telco, a carrier's carrier, so very proud to be. Our business model is simply so we capture, we source connectivity and communication needs on a global scale.
Those discrete elements, they are bundled together in capabilities that we sell to our telco customers under different shape or forms. For instance, one-stop-shop or entirely outsourcing propositions, but also more and more to new players because we package them to integrate into their processes and into their applications. Whether these applications are on-prem or increasingly, and that is an excellent news for BICS, into the hyperscaler cloud. By doing so, we are automatically transforming our operation, making them future-proof, because as more and more workloads move into the clouds, our infrastructure, meaning our network, our platform, also contain an element of low latency, which is critical to end our communications on a global scale. This slide might be new to you.
It was a surprise to me, actually, where if I look back at when I took the job, basically. The diversification of BICS is a fact already. Yes, we are a carrier's carrier. We are very proud to be one of them. We are a leader in that segment. We serve the best telcos in the world, even those that are operating in an environment which is far less comfortable than this room. We're very proud of that. Our customers tell us that we are dependable, high quality, and they entrust business towards us, as we have seen with the strategic deal announced this year with Ooredoo Group.
At the same time, though, we continue our diversification, slowly but surely, a stepwise diversification, which does not impact our cost to serve, which brings additional externalities to our platform so that we continue to deliver superior cash conversion. Some example, for instance, Everbridge, we provide them the capability to deliver alerts and messages in a disaster situation on a global scale. Another example, for instance, we are proud partner of Dish, which is about which is the new entry in the U.S. We have recently partnered with Lynk to create satellite-to-phone direct connectivity bundled as our global roaming proposition.
More importantly, in the growth area, we are one of the, we are, hyperscaler provider to hyperscaler of the connectivity needs for instance, call center in the cloud, Operator Connect or Microsoft Teams, mentioned by Anne-Sophie before, on a global scale. Those players teach us more and more, so we learn from them, but we also grow our business. More importantly, we are getting into new ecosystems to be part of the foundation for the growth in, in devices, thanks to eSIM, but not only devices, because eSIM is likely to change dramatically, the mobile landscape.
On top of that, of course, we, thanks to our scale, thanks to our number of transaction, we protect end users, and our customers are very happy with that, from fraud, fraudulent use of communications, which is a nuisance from a reputational perspective for our customers. Finally, just the last word on the real, I mean, emerging trend that we see more and more enterprises as a part of a digital transformations. They are renewing their the way they do business, and they are embracing mobile technology because they are perceived as more agile, more secure, and they are internalizing that. We are there to interconnect those private network towards the public network on a global scale because no business is an island, every business is connected.
With this chart, it's a fair attempt to give you an idea of our total addressable market. Of course, it's a composite because BICS is a transforming business. Through legacy core and of course, fast-growing markets. In legacy of course this is de facto a declining market. We are creating tons of value with it, thanks to our superior scale and sophistication of our processes. At the same time, what we are seeing, thanks also to from the COVID rebound, we are seeing that our core, which is essentially mobility and messaging, is benefiting from two factors, from more and more people willing to travel, but also more objects. We are seeing, based on our on our platform, about 45% increase in object roaming, okay? They were not impacted by COVID.
This is in really growth into the market. We are able to their BICS to distinguish roaming behavior from humans versus object. This is very critical when it comes to creating use cases for our customers. The fast-growing market are essentially in the area of enabling CPaaS, UCaaS and CCaaS, okay? Because they... As I said, they need quality footprint on a global scale, certainly serving IoT players that come with use cases, and so on top of that private network. We as the BICS transformation takes place, our exposure to market growth is very clear going forward. At the same time, though, we are proud of what we are able to deliver today as well. Well, coming back, you know, you may ask yourself, what's your right to win?
What are your credentials? What's your on which basis is your story lying, basically? Granted. I took back the segmentation in legacy core and growth to give you a bit of a perspective on that. It's clear who we are today. We are a leader in value optimization of legacy traffic stream. This is really critical because those traffic stream are still very important actually when it comes to customer experience that really matters. Both the technologies and the competencies among within our telco customers are de facto no longer there. These are expensive renewal investment they don't want to do. More and more they are trusting this business towards us. They ask us to deliver predictable quality, predictable business performance.
This is what we do. Thanks to our superior aggregation power as well as our sophistication of our trading floors, we are able to create economical benefits. We say that every one minute of voice generates one point X minutes of voice back, you can create leverage through that. The core, if I were to simplify core with mobility, what we are seeing. We have 20 years experience for mobility and roaming. That is a tremendous advantage when it comes to offering these competencies to a broader set of customers out there, well beyond the traditional telco operators. We see democratization of mobile services. There is spectrum given to enterprise, spectrum for rent. There is the entry barriers to deploying private network is lowering, we are there to connect them.
We are also there to manage legacy, transition between 2G to 3G without phasing of 3G, without phasing of 2G to embrace 4G. That complexity of legacy management in terms of roaming agreements creates opportunity for BICS because we can do this, these operations in a scalable manner. We have built an advantage based on our 20 years of experience on that, first-mover advantage in services, in enhanced mobility for enterprise, and we are able to deliver value managing complexity. In the growth area, again, for simplicity, I focus on digital communication as a services. For us, IoT one day it is already as a service, but we'll also, you know, objects will also join the CPaaS conversation. For us it's critical here. We see clearly a downstream this intermediation, thanks to the workloads and the application moving towards the cloud.
As the application move towards the cloud, communication means go to the cloud, and that's where the opportunity for BICS lies. What we are doing, we are rebuilding our services progressively through API. To enable players that are digital native, but also enterprises that embrace digital transformation to use our capability on a global scale. This is important to stress. No player out there can really be a global player. There are plenty of opportunity for us. These value chains are still in formation, and the market is still fragmented. Great opportunity for us. Thanks to what? What is our advantage?
Our advantage is to have a dependable, cost-competitive footprint reach, which is also based through local interconnect because they come with higher superior quality and lower latency to serve the application better. Finally, this takes to my last slide, where I'd like to recap for you what are the three levers of the transformation story of BICS. Since Proximus bought fully BICS, we started a journey. The journey that basically is based on three pillar. Fundamentally, we are a leader. We want to grow the leadership. We want to continue to scale, thanks to more traffic stream that we insource. We also offer one-stop solutions for our telco in managing their multiple legacies, which are becoming underperforming for them.
At the same time, we have stop-started and is delivering a stepwise diversification in the digital enterprise. This comes with, this in turn brings additional externality to our platform already at scale. We are repackaging our services thanks to software and APIs, and we are offering our capabilities to a large number of players out there, which, they've identified in, which have communication needs on a global scale. Finally, which has always been baked into the DNA of BICS, to have operating margin which are remarkable.
Today, what most importantly, thanks to the additional business that we are getting, both through leadership in telco as well as to diversification in enterprise, we continue to sustain and we intend to sustain this operating margin thanks to operating leverage and efficiency and continuous adoption of new technologies such as also artificial intelligence in our trading floor. In essence, we feel very comfortable in saying that we see direct margin growth with mixed improvement based on what I said, thanks to the stepwise diversification in digital enterprise, and we will continue to sustain our operating margin. Thank you.
Thank you, Joe and Matteo for this. It's not working. Now it's working. I think you understood that if you, if you want to love Proximus, you have to love tech. You have to move to software. You have to look to platform-based businesses. And I hope that you understand that from what we just said since a few hours now. I will now conclude this session on international with a few elements before handing it over to Mark for the financial outlook. I wanted to re-emphasize a few elements that I briefly touched upon during my intro, and in particular, the profound evolution of the profile of our group, now structured around two very different legs, as summarized here on this slide.
On the left, we have our domestic businesses of more traditional activities, where you focus on value management and need to cope with high CapEx requirements. On the right, we have our international assets, just described by Matteo and Joe. This second leg is really Proximus' secret sauce. It allows us to be exposed to fast-growing markets in different geographies. It enables us to create value creation, to generate value creation from CapEx-light activities. Those are platform-centric businesses which enable scalability and, as Matteo mentioned, operational leverage. There, of course, the playbook is different. We focus on growth, and as it is the case for all tech players, we invest in IP, we innovate to capture more and more value. As explained earlier, we know the playbook and how to execute on it.
I think we have very strong proof points thanks to the exceptional performance of BICS and Telesign over the past month and quarters. I think we did create substantial value since full acquisition in 2021. I will not go back onto the, you know, all the successes that has been shared by Joe and Matteo earlier, but I would like to highlight one specific number that will illustrate how we are really accelerating. In 2022, we increased our sales booking, and you said it, Joe, for Telesign, by more than 80% year-over-year, with more than half of this in the super fast-growing market of digital identity. Obviously we don't want to stop here. We have high ambitions with a continued high single-digit direct margin growth for the next few years.
More and more, we want to deliver high free cash flow conversion, driven, as I said, by low CapEx intensity, a favorable OpEx base when we scale. Importantly, less funding needs that initially foreseen for Telesign. Taking all of this together, four key elements to keep in mind for this international session. With the acquisition of BICS and Telesign at attractive valuation, we have a solid base to expand globally. Furthermore, this makes our group stronger. That's super important. We can cover all the digital communication needs of our customers while building operational and commercial synergies. This international leg is also a strong value catalyst. We are exposed to fast-growing markets while we keep strategic optionalities.
Finally, we improve our overall risk profile thanks to diversifying our product and a regional focus ensure a strong mid-term cash generation for that international leg. I think that concludes the international side of the presentation, and we now leave the floor to Mark for the financial outlook.
Thank you my dear colleagues. I think you've done a great job today explaining our bold2025 strategy. As you can see, the management team is super behind this strategy. We've spent a lot of time thinking it, putting it together. I hope you conclude with us that it's gonna be a winning strategy. Let me. I'm sorry we've got a little bit. Let me take you through a little bit now of what the financial strategy and outlook that underpins bold2025. Before I do that, let me almost wrap up 22 and the Inspire 2022 period. Inspire 2022, we set out, again, some bold ambitions.
Overall, we broadly met those objectives we wanted to reach between 19 and 22. Although the full year is not exactly closed, we're very comfortable ending 2022. The guidance that we've provided with you in October of last year, we're very sound in. You can expect us to report on the 17th of February when we conclude our full year results officially. The domestic revenue for 2022 will grow around 2%. Our domestic EBITDA will grow in the upper range of 0%-1%. Our CapEx will close at EUR 1.3 billion. Our net debt to EBITDA will be 1.6x our EBITDA on our Proximus definition.
We will have sustained a 3-year stable dividend of EUR 1.2 per share and return nearly EUR 1.2 billion to the shareholders over the Inspire 2022 period. We're very proud of being able to execute that strategy. Now to the future. bold2025, as Guillaume set out and the team alluded to, is a growth strategy that will create long-term value for our shareholders. Within that strategy, the ambitions I think we've now set out are clear. We will grow our domestic revenue and return our EBITDA to the level of 2022 by 2025. We'll accelerate our international business EBITDA and aim direct margin of high single-digit CAGR growth. We'll grow our group EBITDA as from 2024, and with 2025 EBITDA slightly above the 2022 level.
Our CapEx will come back to normalized levels after the peak in 2023. Our goal is to maintain a sound financial position by rebasing our dividend coverage, and we commit to a long-term free cash flow growth trajectory. Let me start with a domestic perspective. We have a commercial strategy that the team set out today in place and has illustrated that we will deliver top-line growth in all customer segments, consumer, business, wholesale, in spite of the anticipated market landscape which will impact some specific products. We expect to achieve that through a combination of measures. Firstly, fiber migration. Win back will drive growth. We explained that to you earlier today. We see strong results already. Secondly, we believe that smart value management pricing combined with our convergent leadership will continue to drive top-line growth, both increasing ARPCs and reducing churn.
Our multiband strategy has us ideally positioned to meet the needs of our customers in all segments and all positions, as well as to face any changes in the market landscape. Anne-Sophie set out how we will manage the value transformation of our telecommunications business, migrating customers to new technologies while sustaining value and keeping churn at a minimum. We also see strong opportunities to grow in further IT space, specifically cloud security, where we have some of the best capabilities and partnerships that put us among the best leaders in this space. We intend to achieve growth somewhat prudent assumptions from a wholesale perspective. That provides further support, especially on our fixed network side.
On the OpEx side, overall, I think we've done an excellent job in managing the inflationary pressures to date with an effective hedging strategy and cost savings programs that we have already delivered material savings of EUR 220 million-EUR 230 million between 2019 and today. We do foresee an increase in our OpEx base in the coming three years, mainly linked to inflation and fiber-driven customer connections, which will support the top-line migration and win back that we mentioned earlier. Transformation, IT transformation costs will increase slightly, but the majority of the IT transformation is already behind us.
To mitigate the impact of this, we will continue to be laser-focused on cost and have identified additional cost savings in the bold2025 period that will allow us to increase our overall savings commitment from EUR 400 million to EUR 450 million, a further EUR 220 million from this point until 2025. In contrast to the first wave of our efficiency program, we will realize those cost savings without a structural headcount plan. Now, in a trajectory to a stable 2025 domestic EBITDA, we will cope with the significant inflation impacts that the world has seen. The coming year, we expect to face the highest inflationary headwind. Wage indexations from 2022, where we were impacted by five wage indexations throughout that year, will flow into 2023, and a further two indexations are expected in the calendar year 2023.
Our energy costs are now fully hedged for 2023. We will still face around a EUR 35 million year-over-year headwind from increasing energy costs. Other costs, other OpEx costs are impacted. We continue to be protected by long-term contractual arrangements and optimization of those costs. These impacts of inflation will weigh on the domestic EBITDA trajectory of 2023, which we estimate to be around a 9% headwind. We will, for a big part, be able to offset this by revenue growth and cost savings. Still, we do estimate the domestic EBITDA for 2023 will decline by around 3%. Turning to the overall plan to address these cost increases. Our execution of the first part of our cost savings program is giving great confidence in the ability of Proximus and its management team to deliver the increased plan between now and 2025.
The 2022-2025 cost savings will come from three main buckets. First of all, workforce. We will continue to manage natural outflow, early retirement, contractor sourcing, third-party workforce. Secondly, our digitalization IT modernization program will continue to reap benefits and deliver cost savings. Finally, network energy and discretionary spend will represent over 30% of spend optimizations delivered through our overall savings program between now and 2025. This savings program combined will give us a plan that will get domestic EBITDA back to growth by 2024 and allow us to return domestic EBITDA back to the 2022 level by 2025. That's supported by the revenue growth that we illustrated with the commercial momentum, the targeted pricing measures that we will be able to put in the market, and mitigating the inflationary impact by capturing substantial cost savings that I just mentioned.
This all while managing the new market structure. Turning to the international segment of Proximus Group. As Guillaume and Matteo and Joe highlighted, these businesses give us a unique pathway to growth. Both Telesign and BICS are exposed to and have been capturing double-digit direct margin growth in their markets. Overall, the international revenues will be greater than EUR 1.8 billion by 2025, reflecting nearly a third of Proximus' group revenue. Direct margin for this business will grow high single digit. What makes this business very attractive is the high cash flow conversion element. As the revenue and direct margin of these international businesses grow, the investment cycle, particularly for from Telesign, will pass, and both Telesign and BICS will enjoy positive scale effects on their OpEx and a stable low CapEx base.
As a result, the free cash flow that grows in these businesses will accelerate faster than direct margin growth. All in all, as I outlined before, after short-term negative impact of inflation, the execution of our bold2025 strategy will be executed via fiber migration and win backs. Convergence leadership supported by our product superiority. Multi-band strategy, which will support growth, but will also defend against the new market structure. Value optimization across both residential and business. Capture of new growth B2B markets in cloud, IT, security, advanced workplace. Our ability to continue to deliver cost savings between now and 2025.
Finally, with the increased, the proven ability of the international growth strategy, this will deliver group EBITDA plan that despite the magnified inflationary impacts of 2023 and the fourth entering market structure change, will stabilize and return to growth by 2024. Turning to our investments in CapEx over the next year, and in line with what we said to you before, we are reaching our CapEx peak in 2023. Our own fiber build CapEx will start to reduce in the coming years. The build volumes will transition to the joint ventures, as we illustrated in the fiber section of today's presentation. Customer CapEx will increase modestly, supporting the migrations and win back volumes, supporting the top line growth.
Other CapEx will reduce as mobile 5G rollout will be completed by 2025, and our IT-related CapEx returns to a more normalized level. Our focus on IT deployment efficiency, long-term contractual commitments, and program optimizations will allow us to return to CapEx levels closer to EUR 1 billion by 2025, despite the inflationary pressures on some domains. During bold2025, we'll continue to focus on leveraging our balance sheet and optimizing the monetization of non-core assets. Overall, we plan to realize over EUR 400 million of divestments during the period, including the receipt of EUR 143 million of cash from the sale of our Brussels headquarter. The remaining divestments we'll realize through the sale of non-core infrastructure and property assets, does not include any monetization of our international segment assets or the Belgian mobile towers.
bold2025 delivers top line growth, EBITDA stability, mitigated from market structure and inflationary impacts, whilst managing a return to a normalized CapEx profile. The result in free cash flow profile of the business is supported in the short term by deploying the balance sheet in an optimized way in anticipation of the longer term investment returns that will be delivered by the domestic fiber investment program and the international growth trajectory. Overall, this results in free cash flow returns back to growth in 2024 and beyond. Given careful consideration to our overall bold2025 plan, the board has approved that we keep for the year 2023, a stable dividend of EUR 1.2 per share, and we will rebase our dividend to a sustainable level for 2024 and 2025 to EUR 0.6 per share.
The rebased sustainable level incorporates all our current known macro and inflationary headwinds, expected changes in the market structure, this will allow Proximus to keep a sound debt level, ensuring flexibility to further grow our business. The financial profile of bold2025 result in a net debt to EBITDA during the 3-year period between 2.5x and 3x EBITDA. Which we would view to keep us in a solid investment-grade credit rating and continue to be comfortable range for a business like Proximus. Our longer-term considerations, the reconsolidation of the fiber JVs, we would still aim to continue to remain under 3 x leverage. Our continued strong credit position provides us good access to the credit markets. Looking at our debt maturity profile, our refinancing over the upcoming 2024 and 2025 bonds have already been hedged at 2022 rates.
Overall, liquidity, debt tenure, and weighted cost of debt are in an optimized order given the current economic cycle. Now looking at Proximus Group over a more medium-term and long-term horizon, the impacts of our investment story become evident. During the bold2025 period, the business stabilizes and begins to grow free cash flow as capital investments pass the peak and the commercial momentum continues to be able to absorb the structural changes in the market and the inflationary pressures. From 2026, CapEx has returned to a normalized level, the benefits of the fiber network start to accelerate, and the international free cash flow conversion deliver material operating leverage.
Beyond 2028, when the fiber JV equity injections cease, joint venture dividends commence and the fiber monetization gets to full pace, the returns from the fiber become materially accretive, all whilst internationally the business have taken material market leadership positions. Concluding the presentation and bringing all this together for the ambition of bold2025, I'll repeat how I started the presentation today with our midterm ambition. We will grow domestic revenue and return domestic EBITDA to the 2022 level by 2025. We'll accelerate international EBITDA, including direct margin growth with high single-digit CAGRs. We'll grow group EBITDA as of 2024, with group EBITDA of 2025 up slightly above the level of 2022.
CapEx will return to normalized levels after the post of peak of 2023. We'll maintain a sound financial position with net debt to EBITDA ratios between 2.5 and 3 by rebasing our dividend as of 2024. We're committing to a long-term free cash flow growth trajectory. That's our midterm ambitions. With today, we are also releasing the specific 2023 guidance, where domestic revenue will grow between 1% and 3%. Domestic EBITDA will decline by 3%, being impacted by the inflationary pressures I illustrated in the previous slides. International direct margin will grow high single digit. Group EBITDA will also decline around 3%. Our CapEx will peak at EUR 1.3 billion.
Net debt to EBITDA ratio will be around 2.6 on the S&P measurement, and our gross dividend for over the 2023 result will be EUR 1.2 per share. With that, I would like to hand back to our CEO, Guillaume Boutin, for concluding remarks on bold2025.
Thank you, Mark. We now conclude with one last slide. I promise you before we take a short break and then go to the Q&A session. To wrap up, I would like to share some final thoughts. I will repeat again and again because, you know, it's all about pedagogy and also to feel the commitment of the management here. Domestically, we'll reap the benefits of our infrastructure investments. Fiber superiority will allow us to sustain current commercial momentum for our consumer segment. At the enterprise level, we'll continue to drive smart stakeholder value management and capture the growth of the cybersecurity and the cloud segments. Finally, our second leg, international, will make us global leaders. You know, BICS as a two-sided communications platform and Telesign as a reference in DI, digital identity.
For all those reasons, I'm convinced that Bold is the right strategy for our group, a strategy that will allow us to grow and create long-term value. I think this marks the end of our presentations, and I would like to thank you all for your intention to be here today. Thank you also for those attending online. I think now we will take a short break before beginning the Q&A session. At what time, Nancy?
Next slide.
Next slide. At, 10 past 4. Okay. Thank you very much. See you soon.
Welcome back, everyone. Now we will take the questions from the room. Please simply raise your hand so we can pass the mic to you. Please limit your questions 2 at a time maximum, and so if time allows, we will come back to you. Maybe, let's start maybe with a first question from the gentleman, Nicolas from HSBC, second row.
Thank you. Nicolas from HSBC. Two short questions. You mentioned a win-back and gaining market share strategy in the domestic activities. I wonder how you assess the risk of a strong reaction from your competitors on the pricing front because they may not have the same product, but clearly they can compete on pricing. Just curious to see how you think you can chase clients without taking the overall market value down. The second question is on the dividend. Just wondering why you kept the dividend for 2023 at EUR 1.2 and cut it thereafter. What were the underlying reasons for that? Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Nicolas. I will start with your first question on win-backs and gaining market shares. I think that historically, the Belgian market has been, you know, super rational in the way the main competitors have handled value management, and I think key advantage of our ability to still have some pricing power on the market. Also confirmed by recent announcements of Orange and Bouygues in the last week, that we'd also increase some price points as of at the end of this month, beginning of next month, following our latest announcement of increasing some prices as of first of January.
Uh, going forward, uh, on the-- with the main competitors, uh, you know, I think, uh, that dynamic should, should remain. Uh, again, because we, we would compete on our side on the, on the premium-ness of the brand or on our ability to, um, to upsell, uh, and cross-sell, uh, our customer base towards those, uh, fiber speeds that will, uh, that will, uh, deliver more value for our customers, and not the price. Price competition is not what we want to, uh, to, uh, to see on that, on that market. For the, for the main competitors, g- I think we're gonna have, you know, a different, uh, uh, strategy depending on the, on the brands that you do consider within the portfolio of brands that we, that we do have, as explained this morning.
On the, on the main brands, I think we have enough differentiation of product to avoid that we will compete on price on that brand. Others should follow because this is, you know, that market needs a lot of investments. You know, all players need to invest in the transition towards gigabit connectivities. It's not only Proximus, this is also the rest of the market. For that, they need to fund that journey that needs to happen. I don't see that the market will lose that ability to act rationally in terms of pricing. That's one. Second, for the new competition. I think there also we've been super clear.
We respect fully the ability of the new entrant to be successful because they have proved that, you know, in other markets. They have been successful with close to 10% market shares in other geographies, in Spain, in Italy. That impact has been fully baked in our plan. We have a significant, material but fair impact in our plan, in those numbers that you have seen this morning from the change of the market structure on the market. Despite that fair but material impact of the new entrant in our market, we are still super convinced that we can get to that return to growth and to have a EBITDA level of 2025 above 2022 levels.
That's, you know, that's also super important, for you to have that in mind. That's like we have not respected the ability of a Digi to be successful. Also, as you've seen this morning, with the strategy that we're delivering, and you know, telco is all about product superiority for years. That's the DNA of the industry. When you have the best product, you win the market. That product superiority is a key enabler of the story that we're gonna bring to our customers that also will allow us to win shares in the north of the country.
Also we are super well protected with all the brands that we have, the portfolio of brands that we have today, within the Proximus Group to adapt our value proposition depending on the different segments of the market. We'll be extremely prepared. I've been through this, you know, 10 years ago when I was working for SFR, I know what it means to face a market disruption. You know, I'm gonna learn from my mistake at that time, also learn from, you know, what works at the time. I think the team of Jim has prepared a plan that I'm not going to disclose today, that allow us to protect, also to regain additional market shares going forward on the market.
That is fully baked in the plan that we have presented today. It shows that the confidence we have to get back to that, to the level of 22 at the EBITDA level as soon as 2025 and even to exceed that at group level. Then we have the fuel and the firepower of the intentional assets. That's a bit your first question. Second, the dividend question. I think this is a balanced approach. I think we have with that dividend policy that we just announced, we are protecting our ability to create long-term value creation with a fiber plan.
That first mover advantage, 3 to 5 years, first mover advantage, but also the growth and investment we have to do in the growth of our international asset. That is that protection. Also a balance between that and shareholder return. You know, when you look at the fantastic momentum we have 2022, when you look at the balance sheet, which is super solid, also at the end of this year, I think we can pay that EUR 1.2 per share dividend without jeopardizing our ability to be at full throttle for the fiber investments. After that year, thereafter, we get the dividend to EUR 0.6 per share.
Here again, I said that several times, I think it is super important to protect also.
The very solid investment grade balance sheet that we have today, that's in current times, that's super important that we maintain that ratings for balance sheet. While again ensuring that we can continue investing in that fiber growth plan and continue to try to accelerate even more what we are doing for our international assets. I think this is the right balance. Protecting long-term value creation and enabling also some shareholder return for the short term.
Maybe that Martin here on the side there, mic.
Yeah. Thank you very much. Martin from Citigroup here. On the EBITDA, to come back to that, could you maybe help us understand sort of what are the building blocks on how you get from sort of the dip this year into sort of the flat in 2025? For example, how much is energy gonna be a tailwind next year compared to this year? On the second question is on the free cashflow. We've EBITDA sort of growing on a group level, CapEx declining. As far as I understand, the free cashflow guidance, does that include the divestments or ex with the divestments? Would underlying free cashflow ex-ing those investments still grow in 2024? Would that need the divestments in order to grow? Thank you.
Thank you. Let me take the first question on EBITDA first. I think again, maybe just goes back to Guillaume's first point about product superiority, and I think we've been super clear about our commercial strategy, specific on the residential side. The momentum that we will deploy and we have, we've seen evidence of that as we exit 2022 will continue. Our ability to drive the right mix and put in the right pricing will continue to be supportive as we go through 2024, so 2023, 2024, and 2025. That's the first thing. Then in terms of the overall, we'll get pricing and volume benefit from the top line. Anne-Sophie clearly illustrated that the enterprise transition continues to progress well.
We've got the balance of the telco business with the growth in the IT space, in cloud and security. That will be, you know, again, you know, broadly supportive of the overall top line trajectory. Wholesale is the other one. Again, wholesale, you know, as we illustrated, we have very little wholesale customers on the fixed network. We continue to deploy JV services or services through our joint venture through our wholesale enterprise business. From a top-line perspective, they're all supportive to the return on EBITDA. Pricing clearly across all of those, specifically on the residential side, is specifically supportive of the top line.
You then come to the overall operating cost, and as I alluded to, we effectively, yes, we've got some inflationary headwinds, and you'll see that, you see that clearly in 2023, where it's pushing pressure on our EBITDA. Those will alleviate as we go through 2024 and 2025, and we've accelerated our cost savings program to allow us to offset a significant portion of those operating headwinds. In terms of energy, in fact, we, I think, we mentioned in 2023 continues to be a headwind.
2024, 2025, it's the market is still very volatile, but clearly since we, you know, since over, you know, late December into January, the prices have actually become more supportive of 2024, 2025, therefore that actually could become a tailwind for 2024, 2025. That's really the kinda main building blocks for EBITDA story. In terms of free cashflow, the question on free cashflow, the divestments, the EUR 400 million divestments is included in that free cashflow profile. Therefore, the timing of those free cashflow, we're not going into the detail of that today. Clearly one of the items is public, which is the sale of our headquarters in 2023. That's a number that you can use.
Overall, the period free cash flow ex the investments will be growing.
Next question maybe from, Nawar in the back. Lady in the back.
Thank you very much. Nawar Cristini from Morgan Stanley. My questions are related to the equity injections on the fiber JVs. Could you please talk about the trajectory of these investments? When will they peak? Also, if you could isolate the last JV that you are planning to go from 70% to 95%, would it be possible to talk about the quantum there, and also, the trajectory? When are you expecting to see impact from that JV? Just some rough math, given that the investment is around EUR 4 billion, so a quarter of that would be EUR 1 billion, so maybe EUR 500 million of equity injections over 10 years, that's maybe EUR 50 million per annum. How should we distribute the EUR 50 million over the period? Thank you very much.
Let me start with the equity injection and the question of, you know, the phasing. Again, we haven't been specific about the phasing, but clearly we illustrated what we expected in 2023. The way that I would think about that is you can see the joint venture, you know, build pace is clearly, you know, linked to that. In terms of the overall free cash flow peaking, I think you can probably think of the joint venture's peak equity injections in the kind of outside the bold2025 period. Later 20, you know, 2026, 2027, 2028 is more likely where you would see the I would model the peaking of that equity injection flow.
When it comes to the overall bias, the overall fiber consortium program, you know, as I said, the negotiations and discussions there are going very, very favorably. We intend to come to conclusion with those, probably by the end of the summer. As you say, the overall number, we, you know, we're still in that range of EUR 4 billion.
In terms of how I'd model it, I would probably think, you know, again, the first investment period will not be hugely material in the bold2025 period in terms of the injections, so it's gonna be later in terms of where you start to get some significantly material numbers from a fiber construction perspective and equity injections.
Maybe if you stay on the same, Roshan on the back as well then.
Hi, thanks for the questions. This is Roshan Ranjit from Deutsche Bank. Just thinking about the open investment thesis around the fiber network, I guess, you know, the environment has changed over, you know, the last 12, 24 months. It may continue to change, let's say, over the next 12 months. How has your thinking changed around that? Clearly, as you highlighted, everyone's investing, everyone wants to make a return, but does that move the bias, you know, towards any partners looking to use your network, given that it's so competitive? Maybe tied to that, secondly, in terms of the kind of demand for people building out networks, what has changed, if anything, in terms of pricing from your side? You highlighted long-term contracts and that protection against inflation.
Is there a kind of supply-demand constraint on labor, on materials? Anything you can say there would be good. Thank you.
Maybe if I take the build one in terms of pricing. You know, you're absolutely right. The environment inflation has changed, the interest rate environment has changed. In terms of how we've reflected that in bold2025, that is in our current numbers. Again, as we kind of discussed on several occasions, you know, the, the, the fact that we've built a machine to build fiber from a Proximus perspective, secured those contracts, secured those relationships, they have effectively helped us in terms of being able to scale with our JV partners. We get similar type, you know, scale from that.
We effectively have secured capacity and the ability to move capacity from our build to the joint ventures is also something that we benefit from. I think overall, you know, from a contractual perspective, a capacity perspective, we feel very confident in terms of the build security. In terms of mitigating inflation and interest rate, again, I think you have talked about the overall we continue to get smarter and smarter in terms of how we deploy. In terms of how we put fiber into the ground or on poles, effectively, the efficiencies and effectiveness of how we deploy that network is another key lever of us being able to manage the overall economics of the joint ventures.
I think, you know, and those are fully reflected in our, in our bold2025 outlook. Anything else you'd say on that?
Yeah, just on the, on that change, between now and 12 months ago, a lot of elements have changed indeed. You know, those elements are rather supportive of being the first to roll out the network. If you look at the, at the condition to which you can have access to capital today, to the condition to which you can access to workforce today, to the conditions to even to build the mobile network, which is not, you know, your question, but everything is different today compared to where it was 1 year ago. You know, I'd rather be in the situation in which Proximus is, you know, having started that journey, having long-term commitment with suppliers, having the abilities, expertise and also the cost expertise. We know how to build fiber in Belgium.
We know what it takes to roll out a point-to-multipoint or a point-to-point technology. We know the benefit and sometimes the challenge to roll out a point-to-point network in dense areas, especially in Belgium. That we have, you know, that expertise in-house that others do not have today. I think this is a way to probably to look at the Belgium market a little bit differently compared to, you know, probably what today most investors are looking at the Belgium market. Because, you know, overbuilt in dense areas, in a rural or mid-dense areas, you know, not likely. Not likely due to the fact that the cost to roll out fiber investment is, you know, that high.
Market structure. Today, there is no framework. There is no regulatory framework to say whether we have the right to have one network in the less dense areas or there is a push for competition through infrastructure in the dense areas. That framework will be probably designed this year by the BIPT, the regulator of the country. We can have, you know, more clarity what the cost to access the passive networks or invasion. And probably those conditions will reflect the cost of all the networks. Not only the cost of all the network in Brussels, but the cost of all the network on the national level, including the 95% that we have committed.
That will also create some, you know, a new way to look at the Belgian competitive environment as well. If you have the condition to access a fixed passive network of Proximus of, you know, our partners, then, you know, you need to make a living on the retail side as well. Probably it will also help us and help you understand what is going to be the future of the retail dynamics going forward. It would be completely impacted by the way the framework, the regulatory framework around accessing, or, you know, fiber networks would be designed and reflected upon by the regulator. That's a second element.
Then, of course, then if you look, if you take all this into consideration. Then you have that framework. You have probably also you need the deal of Orange, VOO to land. You need the deal between Proximus and Telenet to land as well. You know, it's complex. It's not that easy, otherwise, they would be already announced a few months ago, a few weeks ago. That's, you know, it's because you know, as you said, environment has changed. It's way more difficult today to even to overbuild or coax asset with a fiber asset, given the new economic situation. That's a difficult decision to take.
It's not the addition, the addition of Proximus, of course, it's addition of our competitors, but it's a tough decision to take in current environment. Once you have the framework, you have, you know, our colleagues, they land on the different deals, then you can start to discuss. We cannot, you know, discuss first and then have the framework being decided and then have the EU approval processes getting done. We need to do first things first. First, work with the BIPT to create that framework. Second, have those deals landed. Then I think the business discussion between the different players of the market, you know, them should not be that difficult.
Because, you know, if you want to create the conditions to get some return on your investment, then probably in the less dense areas, you're gonna have to find ways to have a rational approach to that challenge. If I look at all that, I think that the position of Proximus as a first mover player to roll out, we have that first mover advantage when we roll out the fiber network investment on 20% today, 50% by 2025. I think that position is a fantastic position to be in and to capture really the opportunity. Mark mentioned the fact that today wholesale revenue for us is almost nothing.
Tomorrow it might be more significant. That's why if you look at, you know, longer term, of course, there are still some, you know, uncertainties. What will be the framework? What will be the decision of the regulator? What will be the way DG will look at the Belgian market? Still, if you take a little bit of distance, step back a little bit, probably you like come to the conclusion that we are super well positioned to capture the value of the connectivity market in the country. That's the strategy that we are, you know, really delivering on a daily basis. And, you know, probably we have five years, 3 to 5 year head start.
That it will be super difficult for others to catch up. That's why we are, you know, such, you know, so confident in our ability longer term to drive that free cash flow recovery and to win that fiber story without disrupting the ability of others to make a living in the country. It is not the approach because we are going to really again, that's super important, build our marketing story around product superiority and value management in between our different brands. That's the playbook we're gonna put forward in the Belgian market.
David from... The gentleman in the middle. Yeah.
Thank you. David Vagman, from ING. First question is on free cash flow and the outlook actually beyond even beyond the plan, the bold2025 plan. Just a bit of a simple question is what is the accounting assumption that you have modeled for free cash flow when I don't remember the number of the slide, but for 2026, 2028 and so forth. If you modeled that you would, you know, like reconsolidate the JVs. That's my first question. Second question on the i4B plan, what are the strategic actually assumptions? You discussed, I think rightfully so about the regulatory framework.
Is it that you basically think that we will have quite a dramatic change for, say, you mentioned the less dense area. I want to understand if you was talking the 25% or is it 5% or 10%? Could it move? Also when I'm talking strategic assumption, do you start from the point of view that you can work with Telenet? It seems that, for instance, Telenet, it seems that they think that they can do, sorry, FTTH plus DOCSIS for 100% of their coverage. Thank you.
That kind of question or the free cash flow question, David? I think it's fairly straightforward. It's on a, you know, it's on an ongoing basis, like for like off of the base of the 2025 plan. The adjustment that you talk about is effectively the joint ventures come and get reconsolidated at the point where we take ownership. In the deck, you can clearly see the dates when we take prospective ownership. It was 2028, 2030, and 2031. Effectively, we would reconsolidate the full joint venture at those points, including the revenue, the COGS, the EBITDA, and the free cash flow, and then the minority interest would be paid out. That's the assumption that we've got in the long-term free cash flow.
On the i4B for for others. i4B, Infra for Belgium, this is the firm that is leading the consortium of partners to help us deliver the fiber network beyond the 70%. Between 70% and 95%. That's just for to explain your question to the broader audience. on, you know, as I said, beyond 70%, probably, I don't -- cannot speak for the regulator, but probably that's, you know, areas where the risk overbuild is going to be super limited. Again, it's not like it's not because the regulator is going to frame something that competition with infrastructure cannot happen.
Framework is different from what is going to happen on the ground. You know, beyond 70%, we are really in the areas where the risk of overbuild is going to be super limited. Once you're going to have a Proximus flag or a i4B flag in those regions, the ability to get another fiber network is super limited. You are talking about coax for that part of the country. Coax is not solving the equation of upload speeds. And, you know, if we are talking about 2020, 2028, 2029, 2030, 2031. In that timeframe, upload speeds is going to be the key element of differentiation for connectivity.
No more down speed. Down speed is going to be something that everyone is going to, you know, to experience because of 5G, because of, you know, fiber being there. Some also, some coax customer probably is gonna be happy with the download speed they have today. Upload speed is going to be everything. There is no scenario where you can live in a region without upload speed being, you know, not symmetrical, but at least at the 1 Gbps level. That's not going to cope with the needs that people are going to enterprises and people are going to have if you look at five, six, seven years from now.
Not talking only about the Metaverse, but a lot of true important services will need that level of upload speed if you look at the midterm. Coax is not going to be a solution. Copper neither, but coax is not going to be a solution for people. Those are the thing that you see based on the marketing you see today on download speed is going to switch progressively on to upload speed and latency. Those two elements, coax, even if you're great, coax cannot deliver.
Okay. Rick, yeah.
I clearly understand your dividend cuts, if everything is going according to the plans you have today, after the difficult period, after high moments of higher CapEx, free cash flow will return to a normal level. Could you give then some hope that at that certain moment also dividend could go up again? That's my first question. Second question.
Yeah.
You had some plans with Telesign before, you just missed the opportunity. If the gates of the markets will be open one day, will you reconsider to come to the market under one or another possibility or is it buried forever and will you take the company into your hands and make a great company of it?
Okay. On the first I think we don't guide beyond the three-year period that we usually take for dividend policy. I think we have been quite transparent in our willingness to continue to grow our free cash flow at levels. It was the slide that was being shared that are, you know, above, way above level that you see today. That's, you know, the only answer I can make at this point. We'll see what we, what we have to do. On Telesign, it's not only Telesign, international businesses.
Because, you know, again, international is big, and Telesign, both assets are on a growth trajectory and will generate a lot of value for the group. Here again, we can have, you know, strategic optionalities of course, but today I'm super happy not to be listed for Telesign. Because my competitors of the Telesign market, most of them are having some difficulties because they cannot, you know, find investment money to continue the growth trajectory. They are struggling. Some are struggling with the share price that, you know, have been slashed by the market. Probably we are one of the only players that can continue to invest for growth.
You know, during the next two years. We're gonna win a lot of share in the market. We're gonna be probably one of the rare players that in that domain to be at full speed in terms of innovation, go-to-market, development, and also to attract the best talents, because we are on a run. That's 2 years, 3 years that are in front of us are key to make the difference on that CPaaS, Twilio CPaaS, market and DI market. I think for the next three years, probably the focus is going to be take advantage of that current situation to create that worldwide leader in DI. Same for BICS.
Make sure that BICS become that leader, worldwide leader in terms of Digicom for the group. If we do that, if we take advantage of the difficult situation for others, I think we're gonna be in a way better situation with a base which is going to be way higher to the base that we used to have 12 months ago. Of course, we can decide whether we have to crystallize that value or to continue, because you're gonna understand more the effect of those assets for the group to continue in that, in the current context.
At least it gives us, you know, strategic optionalities to continue to accelerate organically, if not organically, but to be within the umbrella of the group or to crystallize, in other ways, the value of the group. The value of those assets for the group. Today, I think for the next two, three years, focus is going to be on scaling, accelerating, and taking advantage of others struggling to take winning position in the markets of DI and Trust CPaaS and in DigiCom for BICS. That's the plan. I don't know if you will add something, Joe or Matteo, on this, but that's really the plan we have.
First one in front.
Taking too much. Yeah, one last comment. Also, the very sound balance sheet that we have also allow us to have some firepower in case of a synergistic M&As that could also fuel the growth of both Telus and BICS. That's also important. It was also related to your dividend question.
Thank you. It's Russell from New Street Research. Just on the energy costs, I think you said EUR 35 million delta for this year, which is the same at Q3, and yet the future rates for 2023 are down, quite materially. Does that mean you're 100% hedged for 2023, so there's no variability? What's the variable component for 2024, please? The second question, I mean, Digi has publicly said it wants to gain 10%. Have you got 10% factored in, or is it, you know, five, or what's the number? Thank you.
Russell, thank you for the question. On the energy 35 indeed is the year-over-year for 2023, and that is fully hedged now. I think again, you know, we, you know, we took a, what we think was a pragmatic decision on 23. You know, the numbers have moved south since, you know, late December. 24 and 25 we are not, we don't have a significant amount hedged. A little bit to Martin's point, that I think will now pose a tailwind depending on how the market evolves from hereon in. I think that's the way that I would think about energy costs on 2023/2024.
To come back on Digi, indeed, a fair but material impact in our numbers in 2025. They claim that they want to reach 10%. We make sure that is not happening. As I said, we respect their ability to gain some shares, and I think, you know, more than five is probably something we could also have back into our numbers. They will do the max, not for them not to get to 10%, but we are probably, because we are cautious, we are probably taking a worst scenario in our numbers. Above five, probably. Not by 2025, though. Not by 2025. Over time, not by 2025.
Okay. Question from Yemi in the back. Yemi in the back. Oh, sorry. Yeah.
Hi. Yemi Falana, Goldman Sachs. Thanks for the helpful presentation. When I think about the main difference between the outlook you've presented today and broader market expectations, I think the key differentiator is your outlook at the EBITDA level through to 2025, and there seems like quite a bit of an inflection into 2025. Could you maybe kind of double-click on what you view as the key difference between your expectation and the market expectation into 2025? Is that reaping some of the benefits of the investments you're making on the international side? Is that the benefit of a leaner, more fiberized network? Kind of what are the swing factors there? Is it the energy cost tailwinds? It would be really great to hear any kind of color you can provide on that front.
I mean, I think it's a little bit how we answered the question earlier in terms of the overall EBITDA, right? I think the pricing element, I think is possibly one in terms of I think we've, you know, we've demonstrated we, you know, we're very good at putting pricing. So I think we demonstrated a very good value manage both enterprise and on the consumer side in 2022. We've announced, and we're, you know, in the process of going through the first bill run of 2023. You know, the market has also followed us to a certain extent. I think our ability to keep that pricing and not affect, not be affected by churn is significant.
I think the pricing, you know, we still believe there is pricing going forward, right? I think that's one. I think, you know, Guillaume talked about the other one in terms of, I think the market is maybe taking the view that you're saying. We, you know, as Guillaume said, we have a super respect for them. We are spending, you know, a lot of time making sure that we have the plans, we have the structures in place to make sure that they do not achieve what, you know, they've said publicly. That, I think that possibly is another one. The third one I'd probably point to is, again, you know, something that we have super confidence in. You know, we've delivered significant cost savings to this point.
We have effectively, you know, redoubled down on the overall OpEx execution. We think that's probably the other part that gives us the inflection from what the market was thinking. I think those are probably the three that I would point to. Before I pass on.
To your point, it's not only because of the success of the international assets that will be driving that recovery. I think domestically, we'll also see that recovery, as Mark explained, thanks to operational efficiencies, but also our ability to continue to value manage and to develop our customer shares. It's domestically, you're gonna see that, you know, inflection also happening. It's not, you know, only Joe and Matteo, but it's the full entire team here that will deliver that back to growth story and deliver those 2025 level above 2022 level for the EBITDA. It's not only, you know, internationally that we would be able to grow that acceleration you're gonna see even be, you know, after the 2025 periods.
No, no, that's both legs that are going to, that are going to be supportive for the growth.
Maybe Luis in the back. Yeah, in the back.
Hi, thank you for the presentation. Luis Delgado from Credit Suisse. I just wanted to follow up on the EBITDA projections. I would like to understand from the 1 million active lines on fiber, on 2025, how many of those are you expecting to have on the off-balance sheet, JVs? I just wanted to understand a little bit what are the impacts from the fixed network costs, access costs, on your EBITDA for the next 3 years. The second one would be following up a little bit on the fiber framework agreement that is expected in 2023.
Considering all the capital deployment announcement by all the Belgian operator participants and the capital needed to actually cover 95% of Belgium, that will imply that there is going to be a significant overbuild in Belgium. Are you considering or would you be open to reach a compromise with one of your main competitors on avoiding overbuild?
I may start with that one, so that you have more time to reflect on the first one. Again, on that, we are at that phase where everyone is announcing plan to roll out gigabit infrastructure, which is, you know, a normal phase. Given the fact that there is, you know, for us, we are in that journey, but others have not started, so they need to announce something. Can we today be sure that it's going to be a rational approach? No, we cannot be sure of that. I think we always stated that we want ourselves to be rational in the way we are expecting that roll out of the network. I think that others also say the same.
For those discussions, for that rationality to be crystallized in discussions, we need, again, I will repeat it. We need first the framework to be created, and that framework needs to be created by the regulator and the BCA, so the Competition Authority of Belgium. That will happen probably in the course of 2023. Second, we need to be able to talk to entities. Today, entities, those entities are not being approved, neither Orange VOO nor Fluvius Telenet. Let's make sure that they are, you know, entities that are being approved by the European Commission. First framework, approval of the different deals being announced, then the discussion could occur.
Again, those discussions should be the easiest part of this equation because, you know, we are all in favor of, you know, having return on the investment we are putting the ground. But for that, we need first the two steps that I just mentioned to happen. So to be super clear on your question, you know, we are open when there is no economical sense to roll out two networks to discuss with partners, strategic partners. It's not a new thing. We stated that we were open to discuss. That's one. Second, we are not going to wait for everything to be designed to roll out on network. That's why accelerating, acceleration is super important because, you know, once everything is going to be settled...
I don't know when it would be the case, because regulatory should evolve this year. You know, agreements of Orange and Fluvius in that might take some time, huh? I don't want to be slowing down my investment because I think it's a key competitive advantage, and that first mover advantage is also driving value creation for us on the long term. The more I have rolled out in terms of fiber network, the better it is for Proximus shareholders. That's why we are accelerating. As you said, we are today and further probably for the next six months, we're gonna be the only one rolling out fiber in the country.
Taking again, reinforcing that first move advantage that, you know, I shared with you and I think you understood that message, fully, during this CMD session.
I think on the joint ventures ramp up, I think, you know, Geert alluded to and we gave numbers. Clearly the build is progressing well and we're super pleased with that. You can see from the presentation the pace of the build. I think you can pretty much infer the type of number of customer build-up. You can see what take-up that we get after 12 months. I think the overall number of customers starts to be meaningful by the time we get to 2025.
In terms of the overall, you know, your question about how does that flow into our overall P&L at the end of the day, the question, you know, again, we haven't disclosed that, but you can, you know, broadly think of, you know, low double digit EUR millions in terms of, or by the time you get to 2025. Again, that's fully in our, in our guidance for 2025 in terms of the EBITDA. That's probably the way I would think about it.
We have time for one more question, I think. Yeah, maybe Martin, you first.
Yeah, thank you very much. The one is, the first one is on towers. I mean, we've seen it in the presentation, so, I mean, you must have clearly think about it given my multiples sort of are what Deutsche Telekom sold the towers for. You are, I think, probably the only ones who still own the towers fully. What are your thoughts on sort of the tower landscape at the moment in terms of multiples? The second one is just a clarification question. On the energy possible tailwind, is that already included in the business plan or would that be upside to the EBITDA growth in 2024? Thank you.
maybe I take the first one. I mean, the energy one is fairly straightforward, right? We spent before Christmas doing the capital markets day presentation. The energy costs have really come off since then. It theoretically 2024, 2025 at today's prices would be a tailwind for us. It's not included in the numbers. I think that's the first one. Towers. Should I give you or you wanna give a view?
No.
I think, you know, we talked about towers for on several different perspectives. I think, you know, we clearly don't have that in the numbers. I think that's a plan. We've run the numbers in various different ways. I think the way that we look at it at the moment, specifically on the Belgian towers, given the market structure on towers and our specific position in terms of our financing, our balance sheet. We, you know, we just don't think it's the right time strategically to make that decision. We think it's a key asset that we continue to have on our balance sheet. We again, we see it as a position of strength.
Do we think there's economic conditions that could arise that would make sense to examine that? There could be, but certainly in the plan, we don't have that in our numbers at this point.
I think the attractiveness of our towers will continue to be there also next year and the year after. It's not like the ability to monetize if needed, that asset will disappear. To the contrary, probably, it will probably increase in value, if we wait more, because of the scarcity of these kind of assets, going forward in the, on the European market. That's why we are, you know, confident but calm that we don't need that at the moment. That's, you know, a bullet we can keep for the moment because, you know, with the balancing we have, we don't have. There is no obligation for us to dispose, those assets. There is, as you know, there is no free rent, so there is a cost associated to it.
If we do that, then we have to lease back. Why being in a rush when we know that the value of those towers will continue to be there, you know, over time, and that we don't have to do it, because we can finance our development at a lower rates. That's why today we are really, you know, value managing our, you know, assessing the capital allocation of the group, having that in mind.
With that, we have answered our very last question, and our time is exactly up. With this, I think we can conclude the CMD for today. I thank you all here in the room as well as online. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you.