Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Oliver Keil. Allow me to welcome you on behalf of our CEO, Ralph Dommermuth, and our CFO, Markus Huhn, for the presentation of financials 2021 and the forecast for 2022. The board will present the financials and forecast in the context of this conference and explain the forecast for 2022. As usual, we will be available for your questions after the presentation. Thank you very much. May I give the floor to Mr. Dommermuth now.
Well, thank you very much, Mr. Keil. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our conference. I'll start with the company development 2021, and we'll give you a short status update on our 5G network development. Then Mr. Huhn will give you the financials for 2021 and the forecast for 2022.
The company development is as follows. Our digital business is broken down into broadband and mobile phone. For broadband, we are the largest alternative DSL provider in Germany, serving 4.24 million broadband connections. We offer VDSL and fiber to the home complete packages, including voice IPTV from a single source via 1&1 Versatel. A partner company provides the last mile, either Deutsche Telekom or city carriers. We are doing fairly well with our fiber services. We have won Connect's landline test several times. In mobile phone services, we're Germany's leading MVNO provider with 11.129 million mobile service contracts.
We offer this via our primary brand, 1&1, as our co-brands GMX and Web.de, and the discount brands which we own together with Drillisch AG. Again, we have good quality here. In terms of customer satisfaction, we were awarded first place by Connect in 2021. The customer contracts last year developed positively. We were able to conclude an additional 600,000 contracts, a total of 15.43 million by now. Growth was driven by mobile internet with 670,000 new connections. With broadband lines, we have a slight decrease of 70,000 connections. Revenue last year increased by 3.2% to EUR 3.9 billion, including EUR 3.123 billion worth of service revenue, which represents a growth of 3.4%.
On top of that, other revenue, which is usually low margin revenue, particularly smartphones that we offer to our customers, with subsidized rates and that are paid back in the course of the contract period. What's interesting is the EBITDA by segments. We make a distinction between our access business, which is our current business, and the buildup of our 5G network. If we take a look at the access segment, we were able to increase the EBITDA operatively to EUR 709 million. Why operatively? Well, in 2021, we had an out of period value, which is actually from 2020. And in 2020, we had a one-off volume. If we adjust this, we can see that our operative EBITDA has been increased by 8.9%.
I think that is a significant increase, 8.9% at 3.4% growth of service revenue. I think that shows that we handle our customer base very well and are very good in upselling. Concerning the buildup of 5G, our own mobile phone network, we had higher expenditures than in 2020, EUR 37.9 million in 2021 compared to EUR 13.9 million last year. Or the year before. Now, the next page shows a summary, a growth of customer contracts, plus 4%. Revenue increased by 3.2%. As I had mentioned, the EBITDA, adjusted for out of period and once-off values, growth by 5.3% to EUR 671 million.
If we take out the cost of the buildup of our network, we actually had an increase of 8%. 5G doesn't generate any business yet. The operative EBIT grew similarly to EBITDA, increasing by 5.2% to EUR 570.3 million. EPS, operative again, has increased to EUR 1.94 up from EUR 1.92. The board will suggest to the annual general meeting in 2022 to pay out €0.05 per voting share. You know that we are subject to the 5G Act. We expect significant investments this year into the 5G network, which is why we would like to keep the money in the company right now.
That takes us to the buildup of our 5G network. Let me give you the status overview. In 2019, we were able to acquire frequencies at 3.6 GHz and 2.1 GHz. We are also renting frequencies from Telefónica at 2.6 GHz. This will run until the end of 2025, when we will have our own frequencies available. We were also able to make an agreement with Telefónica last year. We also have created or closed a general contract agreement with Rakuten, and we're able to agree on the leasing of antenna sites from Vantage Towers. We are now in the process of building up the network with 1&1 Versatel partner organization that builds the fiber optic network connecting decentralized data centers.
At the same time, the antenna locations are being set up. We are mostly relying on co-location, so we want to extend existing locations, and we are building core and edge data centers. This is ongoing right now, and we think, as you can see on the next slide, that the first 1,000 antenna locations will be commissioned by the end of 2022, thus meeting our rollout obligations. We're also negotiating with further tower companies for additional co-location innovation locations. We're also negotiating with partners to build new antenna sites because we won't be able to cover the entire network with co-location sites.
Whether we will retain these antennas or whether we will sell them and lease them back has not yet been decided. What's also an important milestone is the acquisition of the 800 MHz frequencies, which is being discussed in Germany, how this should be auctioned. For us, it is important that this be discrimination-free so that we have a fair chance of acquiring frequencies. We will see this auction at the beginning of 2024, but this is out of our control. This is going to be decided by the Federal Network Agency. We're well established. If you cast your minds back, we didn't even have the national roaming contract with Telefónica last year. We didn't have an agreement with Rakuten as a general contractor.
We had no agreement with Vantage Towers or with 1&1 Versatel. All of that has been done by now. Our team is growing. We're building our own team that is responsible for the buildup of the network. We're quite optimistic that things will pan out as planned. Well, thank you very much for your attention, and I'll give the floor to Mr. Huhn.
Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Dommermuth, and good morning from my behalf as well. I'd like to take you through the financial figures on the next pages of the past financial year. I wanna start with the revenue situation on page 14. Mr. Dommermuth has already mentioned the turnover and the cost of sales have been dropped to EUR 2.7 million, which is a drop of 6%. The result has increased to EUR 199 million, which is a plus of 32.6%. These two positions reflect the effects that Mr. Dommermuth has mentioned earlier on, which is the 129 million one-off in 2021 and the EUR 39.4 million of one-off period results.
If we adjust these two positions, the operative turnover costs would be increased by 1.4%, and the gross results would have been increased by 8%. This is a very nice development compared to the service turnover as well. The sales costs have increased to EUR 467 million. The distribution costs, which is an increase of 34.2%. These are the higher costs for sponsoring and marketing. The administration costs were EUR 136.1 million, which is an increase of 26.7%, and this includes the initial numbers of our 5G mobile network. This is also the reason for the high increase 5G cost, EUR 24 million alone, so that the increase in the administration costs were only EUR 2.7 million.
The other financial costs have been dropped by EUR 27.8 million and the assets to -78.4. The result of the operative activities was EUR 146.7 million. The financial results are at -11.6, which includes expenses for the investment to the 5G covering white spots. When we acquired the frequencies in 2019, we had an agreement with the ministry, which meant that the payment was postponed over the next 12 years. Then on the contrary, we agreed to invest EUR 50 million into the covering of white spots, and that will be delivered by the financial results, and that ends up to EUR 11 million. Without that, we would have been coming out at the same level as the year before.
The tax, profit before taxes was EUR 535.1 million. The tax expense is EUR 165.1 million, so that we had a consolidated result of EUR 370 million. On the next page, you see the balance sheet. The sum of EUR 763.7 million, an increase of EUR 365 million compared to the year before. On the asset side, we see that by the short-term assets, which have increased by EUR 340 million, EUR 307 million, the rest is from free liquidity means because of the financial agreement with United Internet.
The short-term liabilities have increased by EUR 181.5 million, which is mainly due to the application of the reverse charge proceedings by invoicing communication services. That means the services that we provide are invoiced without VAT, and we pay that VAT directly to the financial tax office. That means we have short-term liabilities in that respect. The long-term liabilities have dropped by EUR 73.5 million. That is because of the payment for the frequencies in 2019. The asset capital has been increased by EUR 370 million. On the next page, you see the cash flow calculation. The net cash in payment in 2021 was EUR 432 million after EUR 475.7 million in the year before.
The main reason for this drop was based on the upfront payment for the new VDSL contingent contract in 2021, and that was about EUR 200 million. On the other side, we had expenses from this payment which were resolved so that at the bottom line, the net is EUR 126.3 million net expenses. The result was EUR 360.6 million, which is EUR 37.2 million CapEx and EUR 313 million in free cash at United Internet. The cash flow from financing activities with EUR 81.2 million is at the level of before comprising of dividend payments, 8.8%, leasing liabilities with 11.6%, and repayment of spectrum liabilities of EUR 61.3 million .
That in the result, we have a free cash flow of EUR 349.8 after EUR 243.7 in the year before. On page 17, you see the development of the operative EBITDA to the free cash flow. EUR 671.9 million is the operative EBITDA. In addition, we have the EUR 39.4 million off-period revenues leading us to the EBITDA of EUR 711.3 million. That is reduced by the buildup of the contract assets and liabilities. Due to our growing customer base, this position grows by EUR 48.7 million.
We have the accrued expenses, which is the balance of the down payment for the VDSL contract, minus the payment made for that of EUR 126.3 million. The result from liabilities of related companies is positive with EUR 24.4 million. The other working capital is negative with EUR 8.2 million, and the taxes result to minus EUR 121.5 million and the CapEx, the mentioned minus EUR 37.2 million, so that we end up with a free cash flow of EUR 349.8 million. Looking at the forecast for the next year, 2022, our service revenue is planned with a plus for 2022 to EUR 2.3 billion after EUR 3.1 billion in 2021.
The EBITDA will be kept on previously a level at EUR 672 million.
This includes EUR 70 million starting up costs for the 5G network. In the past business year, this was EUR 38 million. The operations of fiber growth is expected to be +650,000 contracts after about 600,000+. In 2021, the operating result will be reduced by one-off effects from the TKG adjustment of -200,000 contracts. The CapEx is expected to be EUR 400 million, roughly, after EUR 37 million in the year before. These are mainly driven by investment into the buildup of the 5G mobile network. Mainly in the first year, investments in computer software and platforms which are necessary to operate that network. Of course, in the extension of the sites and investments into antennas.
With that, I'll hand back over to the operator and we are ready to take in your questions.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we can now start with the question and answer round. If you wish to ask a question, please press your telephone keys zero and one. We will then give you the possibility of asking your question one after the other. If you want to retract your question, please press zero two. If you are using a loudspeaker today, please make your question via your telephone microphone. Now we have time for the first question. The first question comes from Ulrich Rathe, Jefferies. Well, I would like to start with two questions. The first one pertains to customer growth.
You just mentioned that you expect 650,000 operative additional customers against 200,000 shifts from the Telecommunications Act. I have two questions of content. Why is this effect so high for 1&1? Other operators have indicated this pressure, but you can't really lose them all if there's only a shift. Why is that a relatively high negative effect that you're expecting at 1&1? And then I found that this is not included in the annual report. Why is this not included in the annual report and is only shown on this slide? My second question is concerning the network project. Progress seems to be a bit slowed down.
Topic additional contracts for further antenna towers, then soft start with 1,000 locations to replace your broadband business by the end of the year. Should we understand this as such that you are procrastinating the whole project a bit until you find out about the details of the 800 MHz? Because you said that there is no assurance of a continuation of the broadband business for 1&1. I'd like to hear your opinion on that. Well, concerning the first question, customer growth, I don't know what the effects with the competitors will be. What we've seen, the competitors haven't given any details so far. For our side, we can only say that the notices that we're receiving on contracts, we don't see more customers leaving us.
In the past, under the previous legislation, customers were receiving up to 12 months worth of services before the notice became effective. Under the new act, the customer can leave the contract within a month so that the notice is effective much faster. We forecast that this will have an effect of 200,000 contracts this year. The question on why is not given in the business report, I think it is shown in the letter of the board, so on page eight of the report. The question concerning the extension of a network, the buildup of a network, it's not true that we are procrastinating the buildup because there's uncertainty concerning 800 MHz frequencies. We are in the process of taking all preliminary steps.
Rakuten has started their work. They're on schedule. They have reached all the milestones that we had prepared, including Vantage Towers. We're taking the necessary steps in order to build the antennas. It's all on track. The negotiations with the other tower companies took a bit longer than we had originally expected. The negotiations turned out to be more complex than we had expected, but we're again quite optimistic that we will be able to get a good contract result. No deliberate procrastination, but more effort and complexity involved than we would have expected a few we eks ago. On the other hand.
Where we were able to conclude contracts, we have made good progress in operative implementation.
Sorry, let me add to that. Why are we starting in two stages? Well, we don't have national roaming initially. Initially, we have no function for cell handover, and this is why we start with fixed wireless access products. That means that you can put a Wi-Fi router or a cube into your home and use it to place your phone calls. That's the first step. Once that is up and running, we'll take the next step, creating the mobility function. In the summer of 2013, we will start national roaming. Then there will be a short period of stability where we only allow new customers to connect.
Then some weeks later, we will conclude with the final steps, moving existing customers. That means that we'll have to port nearly 12 million phone numbers. That will be a period of about two years before all customers have been migrated to the new network. That's the schedule, the timeline. Concerning the 800 MHz frequencies, I said that I'm sure that there will be no simple extension. Why? Well, because these frequencies have to be allocated discrimination-free. That's what I hear everywhere, that allocation of these frequencies will take the new entrants into consideration, i.e. us. I don't know what the upshot will be, but I'm sure that it won't be just a straightforward extension. Vodafone, Telefónica get their licenses extended. That's not what's going to happen.
Thank you very much. The next question is Jonas Blum for Portzamparc Research.
I have three questions as well. First of all, concerning wholesale, could you give us a status update on the negotiation with Freenet? Is there any restrictions with respect to Telefónica Germany? The second question is tower companies. Could you remind us how many players you are negotiating with and to what extent? What that could be with respect to further additional sites. The question concerned to that, is there a CapEx risk if you don't close any more negotiations? The third question is a comment of Mr. Homann from Bundesnetzagentur, said, I think, saying that a mandatory enrollment would be considerable for the extension of the 800 MHz licenses and, for Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom.
The question: would that be a possible solution to win a second player for roaming for by 1&1?
Okay, let me start with the wholesale negotiations. As of now, we have no concrete negotiations ongoing in that respect. We have to set up our network, and then we can start thinking of that. What is stopping us now is the national roaming agreement with Telefónica, because as of today, that prohibits wholesale. As the mobile services have to be offered across all Germany, that means a tariff is always the share of our share and the roaming share from Telefónica. That makes it impossible for us to now sell our offer to third parties, with the third parties having the customers and doing that.
What we can do is branded reselling, which is more or less a standard procedure as of today. If you look at Aldi today, for example, you're not doing a contract with Aldi, you do a contract with Telefónica. That is what we are allowed to do. As long as we are the contract partner, that is okay. But as of today, we are not allowed to combine the wholesale, the national roaming services with our own services, which is Freenet with Mobilcom, Debitel, and we can't offer that. But that is something where we have different opinions with respect to Telefónica, and we'll have to settle that difference of opinion with Telefónica. The different tower companies, we are in negotiations with two companies, or in discussion rather, about colocation for a couple of thousands of sites.
I think we're looking at 4,000 possible additional sites here beyond the ones that we have from Vantage already. It is clear that if these discussions don't lead to success, or we can only win one of these partners, we will not be able to build these sites and collocations, and we'll have to build new sites instead. The CapEx risk is given if the new sites will be held by us. In the long run, what has become customary in the past years from the Anglo-Saxon area, but that is being taken over by many telcos in Europe, that they build sites and directly sell them and lease them back. These are offers that we have available, and we tend to go down that path as well.
I don't think we are going to have passive infrastructure in form of antenna in our portfolio in the long run, but I can't promise that as of today. As of today, we are not expecting any CapEx risk. A site, no matter whether it's a co-location, where it's not ours, or we build it, sell it, and lease it back, that site will not be on our balance sheet. You asked also about a quote from Mr. Homann, where he said that Vodafone and Telekom may be obliged to do roaming in the auctioning of the frequencies. Of course, I can't comment on that very well because I didn't say it. M r. Homann said it.
What I imagine is that in the case that they say there is a mandatory roaming, that of course cannot only be mandatory for Telefónica alone. They can't order them, auction them, and if Telefónica gets them, they have to do national roaming. If Vodafone or Telekom get them, they don't. The question is, of course, even if that were the case, if you think it all the way down the line, if you can exclude us, why shouldn't we not auction a frequency and offer national roaming to another partner? We could do it just as well as Vodafone or Telefónica could. In that respect, I am quite relaxed.
As I said, I think this has to be free of discrimination and the regulations, whatever may apply then is up to the federal offices to decide.
Thank you. Can I just ask again on the tower companies, which had to be additionally put on by third parties? Would that have a significant difference in cost from what the offer is now?
Well, that's not a big difference. It always depends on the sites. There are more expensive and less expensive ones. As far as we see it as of today, that is not going to be a significant difference.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question is by Martin Hammerschmidt. Your line is open.
Well, thank you very much. I would like to get back to the first question concerning the customer growth and these 200,000 net losses you expect. Why is that not a zero-sum game for the entire industry? If everybody loses customers, they have to migrate somewhere, and 1&1 has solid networks, why is that not a net benefit for 1&1? That's the first question. The second question is, you said that the tower negotiations turned out a bit more complex than expected. What part is so complex? Is it the pricing, the locations, or maybe other components? The last question I have, in your interview with Welt am Sonntag newspaper, you spoke of EUR 5 billion that need to be invested over the next few years.
You have the various components, Rakuten, Vantage, one of them, Versatel. Can you give an approximate split what you expect in OpEx and CapEx, or is that not yet possible? Thank you.
Well, thank you very much. Let me start with the impact of the new Telecommunications Act. As has been said, customers with a minimum contract length of 24 months used to go into an extension, an automatic extension of the contract, with a notice period of three months. We had an extension of contract periods by three to 12 months. Now they can give notice within one month. Your question is, if your customers go away, you should gain new customers as well. Well, the fact is that we don't see all our notices here, our customers leaving us, but only a part of it.
This is due to the fact that some customers have already made a new contract, allowing the other one, the old one, to continue. If a customer, for instance, wants to buy a new mobile phone, still has an old contract running for another five months, they made a new contract to get the phone and let the other one run. That's not necessary anymore now. They can give notice now within a month, and that is the effect we're anticipating.
We will see this effect for 12-month periods. After that, it will have balanced out. These 12 months will see the strongest effect in the first quarter, then less in the second quarter, less even in the third quarter, and least of all in the fourth quarter because it overlaps. Customers who anticipate notice don't have an impact in the second, third, or fourth quarter where they would have had it in the past. Customers who anticipate it to the second quarter won't have an impact on the third and fourth quarter anymore. This wave kind of will flatten out over time. We have the highest peak in the first quarter, then less in the second, less in the third, and least in the fourth quarter. That's our forecast.
Now, if we ended the business now, then it would develop in the other direction, because then when we normally would discontinue this business, we'd have X amount of contracts. If we discontinued the business overnight, then at the end of the day, we'd have as many notices to issue as we have now. Concerning the second question, the tower companies, why is it more complex? Well, such a contract has hundreds of pages plus attachments, and a lot of detail is covered by those contracts because you have to make rules for a long-term cooperation running for 20 years with extension options in our case. This forecast of what will be 20 years from now, how will prices have developed by then, and how will they develop in any extension period?
Can we simply use straightforward price increase mechanisms, or do we have to have a fundamental adjustment somewhere along the line? What happens if this fundamental adjustment makes it unattractive for one side or the other? That makes it very complex. That's my experience from these negotiations, and those are the main issues we're dealing with here. Because we have a very long-term outlook and don't make a contract for the next couple of years. We want to be happy with it for many years. Of course, the other side has the same outlook. They're infrastructure providers. Those are complex negotiations. I'm quite optimistic that just like with any other problem, there will be solutions for this one as well, and that we'll find them over the next few weeks. I'm really optimistic here.
Your final question then was, what's the breakdown of the EUR 5 billion in OpEx and CapEx? In the interview, I'd said, if I add up what we've already spent on frequencies and add what we've ordered in terms of hardware, antennas, and software. It takes us to fiber optic hardware. If we look at what we've already ordered for the next few years, it all has to be delivered, this tops up to EUR 5 billion. But this will not be CapEx, all of it. Of course, the antennas are CapEx. We own them. The equipment of the data centers is CapEx. It belongs to 1&1, but the shell of the data centers, for instance, that is made available by 1&1 Versatel, or the fiber optic cable is made available by third parties.
Locations are made available by Vantage, and so they're OpEx for us. But I can't give you an exact breakdown now. We will be happy to do that when we've finalized everything, when we've made the contracts that are still missing, when we've auctioned or acquired the frequencies that we still lack. Then we can tell you how our business will develop over the next few years.
Super. Thank you very much.
We have another question from Ulrich Rathe. Jefferies, your line is open.
Thank you for allowing me to ask again. Three shorter questions. The first one, could you detail on the drop of landline customers? Is that just out of focus because the focus is on mobile communications, and that is why this is left a bit slack? Or is that something that you want to address again more strongly in 2022? Another point is the CapEx level of EUR 400 million, which is at least above the market expectation when it was announced. Would you go so far as to say that is the start-up level and you should expect something lower in the years to come, or would you go so far as to say how much the start-up cost or the ramp-up costs would be from these 400?
Third question is inflation, specifically on the Vantage Towers IPO. Here, the company declared that the EMSS and I think Vodafone have a 2% inflation cap, I think. So wherever inflation may be, it'll never be above 2% in the contract. Do you have that in your contract as well with Vantage? And maybe in the overall picture, could you, at this point in time, comment on the expectations of inflation and how that is gonna affect your business case with respect, for example, to energy costs and other aspects as well?
Thank you. Before Mr. Huhn comments on the CapEx question, I would like to answer the other two questions. Concerning the contract with Vantage Towers is something we cannot publish any details on because it is not possible to disclose it.
I would be happy if you ask Vantage Towers on the regulations that we have made with respect to price developments, but without the agreement of our partners, I wouldn't want to talk about that, breaching possible confidentiality. The drop of the landline contracts. Landline business is good business for us because we can increase turnover and profit every year despite a dropping number of customers. Of course, we are not happy that we are losing customers, even if it's only a small number. We are, of course, want to grow in this area as well. To do that, we had to drop the prices and intensify marketing and sales, and to do that for, in inverted commas, old or transitional technologies, because at the moment, we are mainly offering ADSL and VDSL.
That is why we decided not to go over the line in these old technologies in terms of investments, but rather turn towards new technologies. We are more and more able to offer FTTH. We have just finalized a contract with Telekom in the past few weeks, and we are starting to work that market from that perspective now. That is where we see the future in the next couple of years, where we are more open to do more investment, while the ADSL and VDSL business is rather something that we'll, of course, carry on with, but, as good as possible as well, but not to put more load balance on the Telekom nets. The Versatel net has a high utilization rate anyway, and the Telekom network is something that we have to pay customer by customer, and we have no pressure there at all.
Why should we invest into marketing, lower the prices with all the effects in the customer base, to keep ADSL and VDSL up, which will drop and decline over the years anyway. Against that background, we want to move to FTTH. As this is growing continuously, increase marketing and sales there as well. We want to learn how to work in that business, and then we'll see that it will balance, hopefully. The customer losses that we have in ADSL, that's where we are losing the customers, while VDSL is slightly growing still, where we then could be able to compensate these loss of customers by FTTH in the future. That's where we see the future, and that's where we want to invest.
Coming to the question on the CapEx, I mentioned earlier the EUR 400 million include a larger sum for the initial ramping up and equipment of the core data center, including the platforms and the necessary software which is needed to operate that kind of network. In the next year, there is gonna be investments as well, but these are gonna be lower than 2022, and the investment sum that we are forecasting for next year is gonna be lower than what we are planning for 2022. I'll try to answer the question in this way. The market has a consensus what direction, what range the investments can move in, and that is what we have been planning and expecting for next year as well.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Dennis Watts, Aventis Participations.
Thank you very much. I only have a short question concerning these 1000 antenna sites that you want to have by the end of 2022. How many sites do you have already? How many locations, or are there any locations already?
Yes, we have some locations. We have test operations running already on different locations, but that's a handful only. We are working under full steam in order to develop the other locations, the co-locations, to get this done by the end of the year. That is what our contracts with our partners are designed to achieve.
We are following up on this very closely. We're on track everywhere with Vantage Towers, including one of them, Versatel. If this continues, then we will manage to achieve our first target. We have to see that we started late in the game. We had the frequency acquisition in 2019, and we would have liked to start in 2019. As you know, we only were able to conclude national roaming with Telefónica in May 2021. We can't start operating a network without national roaming because you're not allowed to be a network operator and MVNO provider at the same time, which is right. We have more than 11 million customers we have to cater to.
We have no option to say, "Oh, well, we'll just start operating the first 1,000 antennas," because that very day, we would have had to start migrating our customers to our national network. Without national roaming, we wouldn't have had any customers at the end of the day. For us, that was an important moment, this national roaming agreement, that we finally concluded in 2021. You know that the real option in our MVNO contract with Telefónica that we drew that in 2018. It took us two and a half years to negotiate the terms. At the end of the day, the EU supported us in terms of pricing so that we were then able to conclude the contract. Of course, we would have loved to do this quicker.
Now, it is what it is. We have to step on it and achieve to develop our network this first stage of our network. It's 25% of our budgets by the end of 2025 and 50% of our budget to 2030. We hope that we can achieve the next stages much faster. That is at least the plan. We have more preparation time for these targets. The 1,000 antennas, that'll be a tight schedule, no doubt. But what it's really about, what's going to be relevant for our business, we will be able to handle this very easily as planned in our business plan. Yes, thank you. Maybe another question following up on this. What happens if you don't manage to achieve the first 1,000 antennas?
Because you can justify that very well. If you don't achieve the 1,000 antennas by the end of the year, would that be still acceptable or? Well, I can't say anything about that. That's a decision by the Federal Network Agency. I expect that we can achieve this target by the end of the year, so I never thought about what happens if we don't. Of course, I can't promise you. Who knows? I don't have to speak about the overall political situation, supply chains, et cetera. You know more about that than I do. I can't give you a rock solid commitment now, but I can tell you that we are on track with our plan to achieve these 1,000 antennas.
We've reached all the milestones in good time, so I have no reason to believe that we will not achieve the next milestones. That's why I'm quite optimistic that we'll make it in time with 1,000 antennas. We report on a regular basis to the Federal Network Agency, so we are in constant dialogue with the agency on our network extension, on the milestones we have, the contracts we've concluded. We don't do that on a monthly basis, but maybe, yeah, maybe it is on a monthly basis, actually, that we actually give an extensive report to the Federal Network Agency. They have 100% transparency concerning our contracts, our milestones, everything.
Okay, thank you very much.
Hello, Miss Moore. Oliver Keil. I'd like to go to the English room to see if there are questions.
Yes, that's okay. There are no more questions from the German room, so we'll switch over to the English room now.
Just as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press zero and one on your telephone keypad now. The next question is from Polo Tang, UBS. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking the questions. I have two questions. The first question is really just clarification in terms of network build costs. If you come back to the EUR 5 billion figure that was mentioned previously, can I clarify if this includes any OpEx, or is it just a CapEx number? Can you clarify over what timeframe this EUR 5 billion is being spent? Does it include any costs for the 800 MHz spectrum? Also, if you know, just to focus on CapEx, if you exclude spend in terms of CapEx on the core network o n data centers.
Can you give us a rough idea in terms of what we should expect in terms of CapEx per cell site? How should we think about the OpEx per cell site? That's the first bucket of questions. My second question is really just about the broadband market. Can you maybe just comment a bit more about the competitive dynamics in terms of what you're seeing with the German broadband market? Only Deutsche Telekom appears to be seeing growth. Do you think the market is mature? How do you think about future growth in your broadband business? Is it more about growing ARPU and people trading up to faster speeds, or do you think you can kind of also grow by adding subscribers too? Thanks.
Yes. Let me start with the second question. In our customer base, we do see a good development as far as the ARPU is concerned, which is growing. As I've just said, we want to carry on with that. In particular, with the legacy technologies, ADSL, VDSL, we do not want to see any drops in the customer base. We have competitors that offer at lower prices than we do. Vodafone and Telefónica are less expensive than we are. Telecom offers roughly at our offer. At our level, if you order a Telecom online, and that's our only sales channel, we have more or less the same terms and conditions as we do offer. In this point, we are not very low priced, but we develop our base. We want to concentrate, however, on the newly starting business of fiber to the home.
In the past, we have been working with city networks, but the footprint was overseeable. Now Telekom is starting, and until end of 2025, I think they want to reach 25 million households, and maybe it was 20 million, I don't remember properly. Excuse me for that. By that, we have much more marketing opportunity with these new technologies, and that's a business that we were lacking of before. That is why we do assume that with the customer drop in the old technologies, in particular ADSL, we're gonna see a growth in FTTH, and that will balance it off. We'll have to see how that develops, how long that will take, but that is our rough strategy as a whole.
Despite of the drop in customers in the broadband business, we had higher turnovers and revenues in the last year than in the year before. On the question of the CapEx expenses that we see in the 5G context, we had named the EUR 5 billion figure. These include the payment obligations for the contract from the next year. This also includes the frequencies which are in the auction 2019. The expenses for the 800 MHz frequencies are not included here. The CapEx and OpEx is concerned in detail. We cannot yet comment on that too much. We'll be able to do that when we can make the business case transparent as a whole.
For this year, we have guided EUR 400 million CapEx, and of course, this includes larger components of core of platforms which are initial and which will not repeat in the next year in this dimension. That is why we expect CapEx in 2023 to be below the level of 2024, 2022. The components that we find in the CapEx, Mr. Dommermuth has mentioned this before, I think, that is the antenna which are gonna be effective on the CapEx, as well as computers and software that will be installed in the data centers. The data centers themselves will be rented from Versatel as well as the fibers and the infrastructure from the tower companies.
Thanks.
The next question is from Joshua Mills, BNP Paribas Exane. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Hi guys. Thanks for the questions. I'm gonna ask a couple. I guess to put it in context, it's been just over three years since you first bought mobile spectrum, and we haven't had any detailed financial guidance on EBITDA free cash flow returns targets for the financial markets to assess whether you building a network is a value creating or value destructive event. I know that today had initially been planned to be a capital markets day. My question is quite simply, when will you provide us with those financial details? Do you plan to provide them at all?
Because what sounds like you're saying is the telco d iscussions have delayed things, but you also made the point that it might be more difficult to give guidance until we have the 800 MHz spectrum auction, which I think isn't happening until 2024. My question is, should we expect within the next 12 months to get a clearer guidance on what the cost, EBITDA, CapEx, and free cash flow implications of you building a network will be? The second question more simply is, I know there have been a couple of one-off payments to Telefónica Deutschland and adjustments which they've reported, and I think you've also talked about in the past. Should we expect any one-off payments to Telefónica Deutschland in 2022? Thank you.
Well, I'll start. With the transparency concerning the buildup of the network. We have a business plan. Far, with what we've ordered or bought already, we are on track with this business plan. We haven't had any surprises yet. We still lack about 7,000-8,000 antenna locations. You know that with Vantage Towers, we've agreed 3,800-5,000 antenna locations of 12,500. We need to cover the missing locations. I said earlier that we're working on it, that it takes a bit longer than anticipated to conclude the negotiations. Once we've done that, we'll have a better overview of how the business plan will pan out over the next few years.
What we still lack are the 800 MHz frequencies because they will only be auctioned to market in 2024, as we expect. I think we can give you an overview of where we stand without these 800 MHz frequencies. If once we have the agreements or the contracts on the tower antenna towers, once we've determined whether we will build additional antennas and then sell them and lease them back, we will decide about that in the next few months, and then we can give you an overview. That will be subject to the proviso that this may change with the acquisition of the 800 MHz frequencies.
As I'd said earlier in the interview with Welt am Sonntag newspaper last Sunday, I indicated that our case hinges on the fact that with our own network, we will not be more expensive in terms of our production after a short few years than we now purchase them. We should move into a phase very soon where this becomes cost neutral on EBIT basis. Subsequently, we actually will be more profitable than now. Because we don't only have the network costs that we need to take a look at, but also, on the other hand, we have significant savings from the fact that we don't have to purchase our own produced capacities externally anymore. We will be able to give more detail on that once we have an overview of how we will proceed with the antenna locations.
We will be able to model this quite precisely, with the exception of the 800 MHz frequencies. We'll be happy to do that. Concerning the question on the contract with Telefónica, whether this will result in a one-off payment in 2021, that is not the case. There will be no one-off prepayments anticipated by the contract.
Thank you. If I could ask 1 follow-up, sorry, on the network coverage. The press article talks about EUR 5 billion costs over the next few years. My question is, does the EUR 5 billion costs get you to just the 25% coverage, which you have to meet by 2025? Or does the EUR 5 billion costs get you all the way to the 50% coverage, which you need by 2030? Just going back to Polo's question here, EUR 5 billion is a lot of money. It really matters whether it's being spent over the next three to four years or over the next 10. If you could give some numbers around that, it'd be helpful.
Well, this figure is to give you a general idea of what we've already spent or ordered by now. In our considerations, we look at covering 50% of households. This figure will not be sufficient to reach this.
What the exact volume will be, we can discuss once we have contracts that are still outstanding now. As we will place the orders for 20 years with Vantage, for instance, we have a contract running for 20 years. For example, we have to rent the data centers, the fiber optic cable, et cetera. They're all long-term contracts. These long-term contracts will be juxtaposed to revenue as well. Certainly, we won't be able to make do on EUR 5 billion for the next 20 years. That'll be more, of course.
Thank you.
The next question is from James Ratzer, New Street Research. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the question. I'd have two specific questions, please. Just going back to the path for tower build out, could you just run through again how you see yourself at the moment or the options to get to the 12,000 sites I believe you've talked about in the past? If I take your comments earlier, I think you were saying you've got up to 5,000 with Vantage Towers. You mentioned you might be in discussions with another third party about another 4,000 co-locations. If I understood that correctly, that would then take you to 9,000. What would be the bridge for the last 3,000? Would that be 3,000 build-to-suit contracts?
It'd just be helpful to kind of run through that and also an expected timetable on when you think you might be able to announce some of those transactions. Secondly, please, going back to the impact of the new telecoms law, I think you mentioned it could have an impact for around 200,000 customers. Could you just help us to quantify, though, what the impact is on service revenues from this change? Is it actually extremely limited or is it more material and therefore the underlying service revenue growth you're guiding for this year is an acceleration from 2021? Thank you.
Yeah. Yes. Thank you. I'll start with the antennas. The agreement with Vantage covers 3,800 sites and can be extended up to 5,000 sites. If we talk to the two tower companies that we are discussing with in the way we imagine it, and that would work out, we would look at another 4,000 sites. You are quite right, on the way to 12,600, there are some sites missing. I'll say that'll be a magnitude about 5,000, which will be built to suit. Whether it's really 5,000 exactly or 7,000 will depend on how we deal it out with the telcos. I think that in summer, we will be able to give you a more clear picture in this respect. Maybe also, maybe quicker, but I don't wanna throw my hat out too far here.
We have no pressure that we have to sign any contract now. We are working with Vantage currently. We'll have to get the first 1,000 sites up, but we don't have to cover all 12,600 now. In this respect, like with everything else, there is a good contract with reasonable conditions will prevail over speed in concluding it. This is why I would like to ask you for a little more patience, and my impression is that we'll have a better picture in summertime, but please don't nail me down to it. As I said, we have no pressure to sign these things fast. For us, it's important to illuminate our different options. Vantage is our prime vendor in this, and from that, we will move on forward.
With respect to the question on the early leaving, emissions of customers due to the TKG law on the service, yes, it does have an effect on the service, but we don't see that as material. In that respect, we don't see them having an effect on our guidance. With the EUR 3.2 billion, we are still quite comfortable.
Just to check. Thank you for that. Just checking. Are you able to give any view on how?
James, can you repeat, please? I heard that you want to check something, but the later part of your sentence, we weren't able to listen to.
Oh, yes. Okay. Sorry about that. Yes. The second part was just, are you able to give any quantification of what that impact is on service revenues, please?
The impact range is EUR 10 million-EUR 15 million.
Thank you very much indeed.
The next question is from Adam Fox-Rumley, HSBC. Your line is now open.
Thank you very much. I've got a couple of questions, please. Firstly, I was wondering if you could talk about EUR 70 million of losses this year. Can you talk about are you paying all the contractors that you've announced at this stage already? Is there any way that you can help us think about how those scale up over time? The second question was on the contribution to the white spot build. I know it was a fairly small number in Q4, but should that quarterly number annualize? So is it EUR 40 million a year that you're contributing there, or is it less than that? Finally, I've got a question on depreciation. Last in the article at the weekend, Mr. Dommermuth pointed to fixed wireless access by year-end on those 1,000 sites. Does that trigger the amortization of the spectrum to start? Thank you very much.
Concerning the question, the use of the 5G expenditure. The EUR 70 million this year are driven by the beginning of the rollout. We have initial expenditures for fiber optic connections now that are necessary to operate the data centers and also for the buildup of the organization to operate the network. Last year, the expenditure was largely driven by the preparation by negotiations for the necessary contracts. This position is now growing together with the extension, the buildup of the network. Concerning the white spots, these EUR 11 million that we're showing in our financial results for this year will be deferred over the period. In the first year we have the highest expenditure at EUR 11 million. Then in the subsequent years, the financial expenditure from this position will decrease.
Depreciation for frequencies will start once we start operating the network. Once we start migrating the customers, which will happen in the second half of 2023.
Okay. Thank you for those clarifications. Can I just ask, is there any payments to Rakuten in that EUR 70 million? Thank you.
The EUR 70 million of course include expenditures influenced by Rakuten, yes.
Thank you.
The next question is from Mr. [inaudible] . Your line is now open.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. I'll keep it to one question, please. I just had a question about the 200,000 subscriber impact that you flagged from the new telecoms law. I think the new telecoms law became effective in December, so I guess this would've impacted Q4 a bit already. Your net adds look broadly fairly stable. Could you maybe comment on what was the impact that you saw in the sort of first month, so in Q4 from the new telecoms law? Maybe if you can just give a little bit of color around does this mostly impact you on mobile or fixed? Obviously, I appreciate there's a difference in size of the customer bases, but where do you see the headwind sort of proportionately hitting most?
The impact is higher in mobile than in the landline business also because we have more mobile customers. In the last year we couldn't see any impact because the new law was enforced, enacted in first of December. In first of December and with that one month's termination notice, customers couldn't terminate their contracts last year.
Right. I guess then I'm gonna ask a follow-up, sorry, it's obviously hard to comment on competitors, but we saw a sizable impact at Vodafone, but not for you. Are you able to comment on why it didn't impact you but it did impact them? Is there something different in terms of how the contracts were structured, maybe?
We can't answer that question, unfortunately. We can't know why it had an impact with Vodafone. As Mr. Dommermuth has explained, the customer could have terminated at the earliest point of time, first of December at a four-week notice. The effect can only take place in 2022.
Got it. Okay. Thank you. That's clear.
The next question is from Usman Ghazi, Berenberg. Your line is now open.
Hello. Thank you for the opportunity. I've just got two questions, please. The first question was, you know, based on your discussions that you're having with the telcos, you know, is there any scenario that you can foresee when you know, when you might be able to get to coverage of 12,500 sites as early as 2025 or 2026? I mean, I just wanna test whether that is even a realistic scenario or not.
The second question was, you know, around the new agreement with Deutsche Telekom, where, you know, clearly it seems to be that the economics of selling the higher speed packages is better. You know, you get to pay lower overage charges. This is and I guess selling IPTV is also more economical now with the new contract. Just in that context, you know, are you planning to be more active on the higher speed tiers and with IPTV than you have been in the past? Thank you.
Well, thank you very much. End of 2025 or 2026, reaching 50% of the households is not impossible. Let me put it this way. It depends on which contracts we can conclude with additional telcos and how fast the build-up speed will be with build to suit sites. We can't tell today. Theoretically, if we can get a certain number of additional co-locations, if we have one or several partners who are quite competent with build to suit, then it is theoretically possible to finish this within five or six years, four or five years. We can't comment on this today because we're not at the point where we know where we will get all these 12,600 locations.
Concerning the economic viability of the new telecom contract that we concluded at the end of last year. In principle, the economic viability of the gross margin that we achieve with this customer is at the same level as the old contract. What we can see is a shift towards more upscale tariffs. The demand for tariffs with wide bandwidth is increasing, has been increasing for years, so we are now focusing on these wide broadband contracts. That is why we've had a slight decrease in our contracts over the last couple of years, and yet an increase in sales volumes because the ARPU is increasing because customers are demanding more and more bandwidth.
You know, are you actively selling IPTV at the moment with broadband, or is this something that is you know planned for future? Thank you.
Well, the IPTV product is always offered with our agreements, with our contracts. That's a standard that we offer our customers now.
Okay. Thank you.
Have not been any other questions, so to close off, I would like to pass back to the conference room. My name is Oliver Keil, and I'd like to thank everybody on behalf of the board, Mr. Dommermuth and Mr. Huhn, for that round of questions. As always, Mr. Huhn and me, mainly me, will be available for questions afterwards. Send us a mail, give us a phone call. In that sense, stay healthy, stay well. We are looking forward to see you in person again soon, and have a good time until then. Thank you. Bye-bye.