Welcome to Deutsche Telekom. I'm pleased to see that you've come here in such large numbers. I think last time we had so many people here was, like, two years ago. How nice to now be able to hold this press conference on our financial statements live again. Nonetheless, we've always been a streaming company as well, even in pre-COVID times. I would now like to, therefore, also welcome those who joined us on the stream, be it our employees or journalists or whoever. Thank you for joining us today, and a warm welcome to our Webex colleagues as well. We'll be presenting our results to you today, our CFO and our CEO, and we'll start with Tim Höttges. Over to you.
Thank you, Philipp. I'm pleased to see that you've come here in such large numbers. It's a completely different dynamics, you know. Different kind of atmosphere when you have all these people around rather than sitting in front of a monitor. Before I present the details to you, let me put across a couple of core messages from Deutsche Telekom for the year 2022. We have achieved the best results ever in the history of this company, and we are clearly on track to grow, and we continue to grow even in these difficult times. We are growing in all important customer numbers and financial figures, and we're delighted about our record results from that revenue and adjusted EBITDA AL. We are investing massively in the network build-out. We invested more than EUR 21 billion last year. We have increased our service revenues across the board on both sides of the Atlantic, by the way.
In the past, that used to concentrate on the United States. That has changed in 2022. We've optimized our group structure. The so-called deal flow, as we call it, was very pleasant as well. We were able to improve cash inflows. We struck a couple of excellent deals. When you look at the multiples, you will see that the timing was good. We monetized GD Towers just in time before interest rates went up. The same holds true for T-Mobile Netherlands. Here, the multiple was very attractive as well. When I look at the target set at the 2021 Capital Markets Day, I can say we have reason to be extremely optimistic because we've either achieved or even surpassed many of our targets, even though we have two years' time.
All that in a very challenging economic and geopolitical situation. No need to tell you about it, but we're still confident. We believe that we will continue to grow across all KPIs in 2023, which means we'll continue our growth course this year. Ladies and gentlemen, 2022 was a very successful year for us, but more than anything, it was also a watershed year. Not just for us, also for our employees and our customers, because the world is upside down. You need to always manage something else, you know, in a different way that used to be a matter of course. Exactly one year ago, Europe was a continent at peace. This was part of our European identity. It shaped the political views of multiple generations. Virtually overnight, decades of peace came to an abrupt end, became history.
Russia's attack on Ukraine transformed our home continent into a battlefield. We all hope that this horrible conflict will be brought to an end as soon as possible. Then a natural disaster occurs in the border region of Turkey and Syria, an area already hit hard by the civil war in Syria and its impact on either side of the border, mind you. More devastating news, more scenes of suffering. Of course, Deutsche Telekom is very much impacted by that as well, because we have a lot of employees with a Turkish background in our company. For us as a company, all of this throws up very complex questions. How are we to act when the world has been turned upside down?
How do we deal with challenges like the impact of climate change, with the long-term implications of the pandemic, the geopolitical tensions, sustained price and interest rate hikes, unstable value chains, or the scarcity of fossil fuels? The question is, of course, for us, what role can Deutsche Telekom, Europe's largest telecommunications company with more than 210,000 employees all over the world, what role can this company play through all of these crises? Well, there are no easy answers, but there are humane ones. That's why we as a company do all we can to help people in this situation. Deutsche Telekom has always been inclusive. This brand has always been inclusive, Now we can document just that.
Whether as a result of the war in Ukraine, this earthquake, the flooding in the Ahr Valley, or in the wake of COVID. We help where we can with donations, free phone calls, free of charge SIM cards, and with technology. As we speak, by the way, we are trying to transport special containers to Turkey carrying mobile communications technology for disaster situations. After having donated money, we are now getting technology to Turkey for the sake of reinstalling communications. That is crucial for people so that they can stay in touch. When the world is on its head, we as the people of Deutsche Telekom are deeply touched. As a company, it is also our duty to act rationally and with professionalism and to not lose sight of our corporate mission. Numbers are not our only focus.
We also live up to our social responsibility, and that includes, first and foremost, playing our role in the economies and societies we serve. We work on the basis of a long-term strategy. We operate networks at the best quality, and in 2022 we invested around EUR 21 billion worldwide. The bulk of which, by the way, went towards the ongoing network build out infrastructure. We offer customers our outstanding service, but we also constantly strive to find new ways of becoming more efficient with our consumption of electricity and other energy sources in spite of rising data volumes. We collaborate with partners, both large and small, and work together on innovative projects. This is how we help to safeguard the continued functioning of the economies and of society.
Ladies and gentlemen, the 2022 figures go to show that with good management we can still achieve good results even in times of crisis. We increased reported net revenue by 6.1% against 2021 to EUR 114.4 billion. A new record. On an organic basis, i.e, excluding exchange rate effects and changes to the group structure, our service revenues increased by 3.7% to EUR 91.9 billion and we grew on both sides of the Atlantic. Reported adjusted EBITDA AL increased by 7.7% against 2021 to now EUR 40.2 billion, the highest earnings in the history of our company. The consensus estimate by capital market analysts put average adjusted EBITDA at EUR 40.1 billion.
Free cash flow was up 30.2% year-on-year to EUR 11.5 billion. Analysts had anticipated an average of around EUR 10.9 billion. Don't forget, cash flow is what is left after CapEx. Our leverage ratio reached its peak in 2022. In the Q3 of 2022, the ratio of net debt to adjusted EBITDA AL was 2.79. By the end of the year, we had already successfully reduced it to 2.58. You know that our range, the investment rate is 2.25-2.5. Both our reported figures and analysts expectations for 2022 were based on an exchange rate of $1.05 to the euro.
For our planning at the start of 2022, we could not of course have foreseen the development of the US dollar. We based our own guidance back then, therefore, on the U.S. dollar exchange rate from 2021 and made the group structure comparable for both years. This mainly relates to the end of the third quarter of 2021. This is when we sold our fixed network business in Romania and we sold a majority stake in T-Mobile Netherlands and, of course, we also adjusted that. On this organic basis, we began with a guidance for adjusted EBITDA AL of around EUR 35.6 billion. We ultimately posted earnings of EUR 37.1 billion.
Free cash flow was expected to reach around EUR 10 billion but we actually achieved EUR 10.6 billion, up from EUR 8.4 billion in 2021. Why am I giving you all these details? Well, regardless of how you look at it, whether you look at the adjusted USD exchange rate or the actual exchange rate, we grew across the board and we grew above the consensus level. We exceeded the consensus across the board. This is my message. We achieved the same for earnings per share. We ended the year at EUR 1.83 per share. This includes several non-recurring effects which we do not factor into our development of operations. Christian Illek will tell you more about that in a moment. Factoring out the impact of these non-recurring effects on earnings, adjusted earnings per share totals EUR 1.51.
We're not just, you know, celebrating the EUR 1.83. We said, "Okay," there were a couple of one-offs. Even adjusted for that, we still have a result of an earnings per share of EUR 1.51, which is the basis for our proposed dividend. For 2022, we plan to raise the dividend by over 9% to EUR 0.70 per share, subject to approval by the shareholders meeting and the relevant bodies. Taken on the basis of our recurring earnings per share, this equates to a dividend payout ratio of over 46%. As promised, our shareholders will benefit from the group's positive earnings performance. How will we continue in 2023? Recurring earnings per share are expected to reach at least EUR 1.60. That would be a plus of more than 6% over the result of 2022.
Obviously, we will stand by our dividend policy, which is we plan to pay out between 40% and 60% of recurring earnings per share. After the two years, 2021 and 2022, we can also draw some preliminary conclusions on where we stand with regard to the outlook we gave you at the Capital Markets Day in 2021. In the U.S., we continued building out our 5G network on the basis of 2.5 GHz spectrum, covering 265 million people by the end of 2022. That's 2.5 times as many as in 2020. In just two years. The goal is to hit the 300 million mark by the end of 2023. Incidentally, this is significantly more than what AT&T and Verizon have to offer because they don't have the 2.5 GHz spectrum for the 5G rollout.
This is a major competitive edge for us in the U.S. right now, and we are making the most of it. In Germany, our 5G network covered 95% of the population at the end of 2022, over 40% more than two years ago. I mean, you keep track of the optical fiber build-out, don't you? We've significantly stepped up the pace of this build-out in Germany and in our European subsidiaries. As things stand, we can now offer lines with speeds of up to 1 GB to 13,500,000 Households. In Germany, we more than doubled the number of ultra-fast lines against the end of 2020 to 5, 400,000 . We are ramping up the pace of the build-out further.
More than 2,500,000 FTTH lines are set to be added in 2023, rising to up to 3,000 ,000 not just 2,500,000 . You know, this is what I'd like to see. Not only are we building out the networks fast, we are also a quality leader. We're not just saying that. This is why, you know, what customers are saying, and this is also the result of several tests. Customers are coming to us in large numbers because of our excellent service quality, and that's why we are winning market share in all our markets. Let me give you a couple of figures from the past year. We recorded almost 12,000,000 net mobile postpaid additions in the United States. Just a couple of examples now. The figure for Continental Europe was around 3,200,000 in the same period.
Again, postpaid customers. We won some 1,250,000 broadband customers in Germany and our European subsidiaries in the two-year period. In our TV business, this was boosted by the world championship, we now have 570,000 customers on the European continent. Our subscriber numbers are growing considerably, and this obviously also boosts our financial position. We announced the average annual growth rates we intend to achieve for 2020 through 2024. We are now, after two years, with some of our important KPIs at the upper end or above our ambition level. For instance, for our service revenues, we set an average annual growth rate for the four-year period of 3%-4%. In 2021 to 2022 annual growth was 3.6%. We plan to increase this further in the current year.
We expected adjusted core EBITDA AL to grow by 3%-5% annually. At present, growth stands at 7.3% averaged over both years, and we want to sustain this growth this year at a level of around 7%. Core EBITDA AL takes account of the reducing effect of the terminal equipment lease business in the United States. Just to be completely clear, in business outside of the U.S. too, the increase of 4.8% in 2021 and 2022 is significantly higher than our ambition level of 2%-3% annually. Free cash flow has grown by EUR 5.2 billion or over 80% since 2020. For 2023, we expect over EUR 16 billion in free cash flow. We will continue our story in the U.S. 100%.
It really pays off 100% and that is a plus of another 40% or more. Efficient cost control is an integral part of our planning. Over the four-year period, we want to reduce indirect costs by around EUR 1.2 billion. We can see that technical progress, automation, digitization are supporting us here. In Germany, our cost-cutting measures are on track. In our European subsidiaries, we face numerous cost increases that we need to offset, especially rising energy costs are giving us some headache in Europe.
The revenue mix at T-Systems has shifted somewhat compared to our original planning, which in turn leads to higher indirect costs, and we'll work on that. All told, the next stage of the journey to our ambition level won't be easy, especially when you look at current inflation trends, we still have our target in clear view, and we'll find a way. Let me now talk about the group structure or portfolio optimization. We sold our stake into T-Mobile Netherlands for EUR 3.8 billion and plowed part of the cash proceeds, EUR 2.2 billion, into increasing our stake in T-Mobile US We also carried out a capital increase and, you know, everybody belittled it at the beginning. Why would you do that? Now, you know, we can see that it really paid off.
The price is at 21.40, as part of our capital increase, we issued 225 million new T-Shares at a favorable valuation. SoftBank received the new T-Shares and in return, we received 45 million T-Mobile shares. By the end of 2022, T-Mobile US had bought back shares with a total volume of around $3 billion, and that's precisely the number we gave them. We did not participate in this buyback, which means they bought shares back, which meant that our stake increased. We had a stake of 43%, but right now we hold a 49.6% stake in T-Mobile US, which means that we are pretty close to the strategically important mark of 50%.
The sale of the majority stake in GD Towers will generate net proceeds of around EUR 10.7 billion. By the way, we have them. That came in at the end of last month, and this will help us to further improve our debt position. You won't see this reflected in the 2022 figures yet, however, because the sale was only completed as of the 1st of February this year. Just as an outlook for the Q1 of 2023. Already by year-end 2022, we had improved our ratio of net debt, i.e. excluding lease payment obligations to adjusted EBITDA AL against year-end 2021. Our target from the Capital Markets Day is in clear view. Again, thanks to the proceeds from the sale of the majority stake in the cell tower business and the growing earnings performance in the operational business.
We plan to continue this strong trend through the current year and in key areas to quicken the pace significantly against 2022 because it is now time to continue the success of our efforts over the past two years. Let me now talk about our outlook. Adjusted EBITDA AL is expected to increase to around EUR 40.8 billion, up from EUR 39.3 billion on a like-for-like basis. That's a 4% increase. We expect adjusted core EBITDA AL to grow by 7%. Free cash flow is expected to increase by over 40% against 2022. The target value is over EUR 16 billion compared with EUR 11.2 billion on a like-for-like basis. This strong growth is mainly attributable to the U.S. As of year-end 2022, the integration of Sprint into T-Mobile US was largely completed.
While we expect a significant reduction in the integration costs in 2023, the U.S. team predicts an over 20% rise in the synergies unlocked by the business combination. I mean, that's quite a number, isn't it? From $7.6 billion-$13 billion in Free Cash Flow in the U.S. That really shows how successful this business combination has been. T-Mobile US has invested massively in the mobile networks in recent years. Together with the Sprint integration, that has resulted in our U.S. subsidiary repeatedly taking the number one spots in the most important network tests. We want to keep it that way. Network quality and multiple award-winning customer service are the biggest draws in the competition for customers, after all. After high investments over the last few years, T-Mobile US is now in a position to significantly scale back spending by around a third.
In addition to the positive development in operational business, this will give a real boost to free cash flow. Exactly as we predicted at the close of the transaction in 2018 and at Capital Markets Day in 2021. We're not investing less in networks, mind you. We've just reduced our expenses in connection with the business combination because the integration has been largely completed. In the group outside of the U.S., we will continue to invest large volumes in 2023. To be quite clear here, we will remain Germany's biggest network investor as well. We are strong as a group, we generated so much cash in the United States that we can continue investing in Germany even in difficult times. Telekom Deutschland invested around EUR 4.4 billion in 2022, with much of this going towards the FTTH build out and additional 5G antennas.
Not only do we intend to continue investing, but we even want to step up our spending here. These are the investments in infrastructure in Germany that you can see in our figures. Now, you may be wondering why isn't that the EUR 5 billion that I mentioned? Well, don't forget the investments of DFMG. You need to put that on top and then you will arrive at the EUR 5 billion. Total investments by the group in Germany are, of course, higher as they also contain the contributions to the other operating segments, for instance, T-Systems. In the Glasfaser Nordwest and Glasfaser Plus joint ventures for the FTTH build out, that is another investment. Together with our partners, we are building out passive mobile infrastructure.
This previously formed part of group investments with the sale of the majority stake in our cell tower portfolio in Germany and Austria. We will no longer include these investments in our group figures going forward. We'll continue to intensively build out the network together with our partners. Through these partnerships, we are unlocking additional capital for the investments. This enables us to build out faster than if we were investing only our own capital and to offer our customers more FTTH lines in a shorter space of time than we could realize merely with our own capital. Oh, that was a great sentence. Anyway, with that, I will hand over to Christian Illek, who will take you through the developments in the operating business, and he will give you an overview of our financial KPIs.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank our Deutsche Telekom staff for this excellent year, which was 2022. This was definitely a team achievement on both sides of the Atlantic. I'm guessing we had one of the most collaborative years at Deutsche Telekom. People identify with Deutsche Telekom more than ever before, which is also reflected in our pulse survey. Our employee satisfaction stands at 82%, which is an all-time high. They say that they like working for Deutsche Telekom very much, and these are very encouraging numbers. I would like to thank our workforce very much.
Okay, I'll carry on. Thanks a lot, Tim. I'm going to break down my comments today into four sections. As usual, I'll look at the group's financial results in the fiscal year and the Q4 . We'll take a look at the development of the operating segments. As usual, I will look at the development of net profit, net debt, and the leverage ratio. I will then tell you about the guidance for the 2023 financial year. As Tim said, we have significant deltas between the organic and the actual results. That's due to two factors. Revenues and earnings for the units that aren't in euros have to be converted during the reporting period. This is especially the case with T-Mobile US.
We had an exchange rate of $1.18 to the euro, or we expected that. It turned out to be 1.05. The impact on reported service revenues for T-Mobile US increased by 20.4% as a result of the strong dollar. Assuming constant exchange rate, organic growth amounted to 4.9%. That's a EUR 7.15 billion difference. In 2021, the revenue and reported adjusted EBITDA AL still included a fixed network business in Romania, as well as operations of T-Mobile Netherlands. This changed in 2022. T-Mobile Netherlands was excluded. It was still fully consolidated in the group in the first three months of 2022. Service revenues in the group grew by 3.7% year-on-year.
4.9% growth in the U.S., excluding the U.S., the business expanded by 1.8%. As you know, the Americans have also scaled down their terminal equipment leasing. Last year alone, business revenue was reduced by $1.9 billion, that means that once again, we have pressure on adjusted EBITDA. The Americans also report core EBITDA AL before the terminal device leasing. In the past year, we saw an increase of 6.8% year-on-year and 8% in the US. The 6.8% was at the group level. Reported net revenue of the group increased by 4% to EUR 29.8 billion in the first three months from October to December 2022. In the three months, that's headline growth around EUR 1.15 billion.
That's a great development. We're seeing continued growth. This brings me to a look at the operative segments. We'll start as usual with T-Mobile US. As Tim said, 265,000,000,000 people in the U.S. now have 5G. Americans call it Ultra Capacity. That's an increase of 55,000,000 inhabitants compared to the previous year. We have a huge lead over the main competition in terms of build out. In mobile communications, we were once again very strong. As we expected, we have 1,800,000 branded postpaid customers in Plus in the first three months. Of these, 0.900,000 additions were attributable to the postpaid phone customer segment. Also, in high-speed internet offering, T-Mobile won 524,000 new customers in the Q4 .
That customer base now totals 2,600,000 , which is 2,000,000 more than the prior year. Turning to the financials, we reported on that on the 1st of February. Service revenue increased at T-Mobile US 3.7% in the first three months. Postpaid phone customers was up 7% year-over-year. This brings me to the next segment, Germany. In Germany as well, we saw very stable growth. Very profitable business. Net broadband additions totaled 74,000 in the Q4 . At the beginning of this year, 2022, we estimated the effect of the new Telecommunications Act, and it's a one-off effect, and that materialized. The share of customer additions exceeded our target of 40%. New customers in broadband were above this 40% mark, as I said.
Fiber optic baselines, including around 240,000 lines that were migrated recorded a total of 413,000. Customers were migrated from ADSL to VDSL without having to conclude a new contract. That was great for customers. We recorded a strong increase in the number of customers with a broadband line of 100 megabits or faster, with this number growing by 1,100,000 year-on-year to 5,900,000 . In the Super Vectoring area, it increased by around 570,000 compared to 2021. That's an increase of 46%. Also, like in the last quarter, branded mobile customers grew strongly in the Q4 at 225,000 increase.
About 110,000 of these are on the next Magenta brand. We have continued strong customer additions at Congstar. In spite of this, you see from the churn rate that we're still struggling a bit because of the amendment of the German Telecommunications Act, which. That was to be expected that it would increase the churn rate. Service revenues in the Germany segment increased by 1.7% in organic terms. Mobile service revenues grew strongly by 3.5%. The fixed network business grew by 1%, with broadband service revenues growing at a stable rate of 5%. Revenue in the segment was up 1.2% to EUR 6.4 billion in the Q4. Organic growth was comparable to this.
This was due especially because of slower revenue growth in terminal equipment business. By contrast, service revenues increased by 1.7%. Reported adjusted EBITDA in the Q4 rose 2.9% to EUR 2.5 billion. In organic terms, 3%. Mostly from two sources: a reduction in indirect costs and increase in indirect service revenue, that really strengthened this development here. It sounds, like, completely normal that we have increased earnings in the Germany segment for 25 quarters in succession, we want to stay that way. Let's move on to the Europe operating segment. Just at the outset, let me say this: Europe is growing. We've talked about energy costs. We can also add personnel costs to that. Europe is growing in terms of revenue and earnings.
We're getting some headwinds, though, because of conversion rates, exchange rates. Especially with the customer base, we're very stable with 180,000 mobile contract net adds, 92,000 new broadband customers, 185,000 new FMC customers for our convergent product packages. We increased our customer base by 32,000 in the TV business. Reported segment revenue was up slightly at 0.3%. We had some negative conversion rate effects with the foreign and złoty. Organic revenue, or rather, revenue generated by the Europe segment grew by 0.2% year-on-year. Organic revenue slowed by around 2.6 percentage points as a result of two factors. With the segment only adjusted EBITDA AL only increasing by 0.9%.
This was due to a supplementary telecommunication tax imposed in Hungary, which accounts for 1.5 percentage points of adjusted EBITDA AL. Secondly, earnings were also reduced by the increase in energy costs to an effect of 1.1%. At T-Systems, we have good order entry and revenue figures. For the Q4, order entry was up 2%. Revenue increased by 6.2% to EUR 1 billion. You could ask the question, why was adjusted EBITDA AL then down? This was largely due to a risk provision for several major projects. That doesn't mean these risks will materialize, but we're very prudent in our as we proceed with provisions. Over the year as a whole, though, we expect the result to be positive.
Turning to the towers business, we have built 300 new locations, 1,200 new sites in Germany alone. Recurring lease revenues grew by almost 6%. Underlying adjusted EBITDA AL in the cell tower business grew by 6.7%. With the sale of the majority stake in GD Towers, the tower business will no longer be reported as a fully consolidated part of the group. As such, this is the last time today that we will be including GD Towers in our reporting. It's no longer included in the group guidance either for 2023. If you look at free cash flow for the group, it increased 30%. What's great about this is the quality of free cash flow. This is due mostly to business activities, so it's organic, and we have less leasing obligations to pay back.
In spite of investment, we were able to grow 30% there. Looking at the adjusted net profit for the group in 2022, we saw growth of 54% to EUR 9.1 billion. That's a very outstanding operative performance. Looking at adjusted EBITA, we had a positive effect because of depreciation and amortization decreasing year-over-year by around EUR 1.3 billion. Also, we got out of the cell tower business as a discontinued operation in the Q4, so that slowed depreciation, and we had a higher financial EBITA of EUR 1.1 billion due to financial activities. That had a positive effect on adjusted net profit in 2022. I'll tell you more about that in a little bit when I talk about the forecast.
Also, as a result of the strong increase in EBITA, we saw growth also in the contribution to EBITA, where we had to make payments to the minority shareholder in the U.S. that was greater as a result. When I compare our performance to the previous quarter, we saw an increase of EUR 3 billion compared with the end of 2021. This increase is due to effects attributable to the T-Mobile US, and that explains this net increase in net debt by EUR 3.1 million. If you don't include leasing, it was significantly less. Around EUR 70.1 billion of net debt is attributable to that, to T-Mobile US.
This means that Also, if we take into account the U.S., strong U.S. dollar, that yields an increase of around EUR 4 billion. Free cash flow was affected by the sale of our business in the Netherlands as well as our stake in GlasfaserPlus. That had a positive effect on free cash flow. The following factors, acquisition of spectrum in the U.S. and mid-band and white space, for example, with 2.5 GHz, that had a negative impact on that. The buyback in 2022 also, and our acquisition of shares in T-Mobile US, where we also spent EUR 2.5 billion to achieve 49.6% of shares in T-Mobile US.
This means that, and you see this on the right-hand side of the chart, that leasing obligations or the leverage ratio without leasing improved from 3.07 to 2.58. This improvement is reflected in the inclusion of leasing too. You see the outstanding performance in reduction in debt we were able to achieve. In the next quarter, we'll once again see an additional improvement in this ratio because EUR 7.7 billion in cash will be generated by the transaction through the sale of the tower business. This brings me to the group guidance. Here you've heard the figures for the past period.
We expect a substantial increase in both adjusted EBITDA AL and in free cash flow. What things can we compare? Mostly in the middle column, we've removed the Netherlands and the tower business. We've removed that as well. Then we've estimated a dollar exchange rate of 1.05. With the U.S. EBITDA, we had a certain bandwidth. We are placing in our guidance to, and we're expecting group adjusted EBITDA AL to increase by 4% and adjusted core EBITDA AL, excluding the effect of terminal equipment leases in the U.S. to increase by 7%, around EUR 40.5 billion. You've seen with the adjusted EBITDA, we've removed two major effects. First of all EUR 0.18 positive effect through together with T-Mobile US and EUR 0.09 improvement by the elimination of provisions for health insurance. We have a health for sales effect through ongoing depreciation for the cell tower business in the Netherlands accounting for EUR 0.05. These are one-off effects totaling EUR 0.32. This is the baseline for this year. With that, I turn the floor back to Tim.
Christian. Thank you very much, Christian. Yes, the world's been turned upside down, like I said at the beginning. In this complex world, it is very hard to really keep track of all the things happening. A lot of the things that we've talked about maybe sounded as if it was pretty easy, but it wasn't at all. 2023 won't be an easy year either. In fact, there's a certain economic framework within which we are operating, and we need to control things tightly. First of all, capital market interest rates. The base rate currently stands at 3.5%. By mid-March, this will probably be up by another 0.5%. Financial analysts expect that this will not be the last increase for this year, and we already assume that in our forecast for the debt situation.
Let's talk about inflation. In Europe, it stood at 8.5%. In Germany, as of January, it rose again compared to the previous month. The EU, in its winter forecast, expected a slight improvement and predicted 6.4%. The ECB for 2023 still continues to expect high inflation rates. They believe that until 2025, there will still be more risks than opportunities. The same holds true for risks relating to energy supply. Yes, until now, our telecommunications company has weathered the crisis much better than a lot of our competitors, but that's attributable to the fact that even before COVID, we had hedged all our energy prices. Energy costs are up.
While in the Euro area, prices stood at 17.2% compared to 25% increase the months before that. The EU Commission is having a hard time predicting what the future will bring here. In fact, they do not dare to come up with a clear-cut statement on it. There are supply chains, and here the question is whether they will become more resilient and more stable again. Thanks to long-term supply contracts and smart warehousing concepts, we weathered this crisis very well in this area too. We haven't faced any bottlenecks. In fact, we do see some improvements here and there, in connection with semiconductor chipsets, for instance. The question is, though, whether the situation will improve overall or whether it might actually deteriorate.
Needless to say, we are very concerned about the conflict between the Western world and China and any future developments in this context. Despite such adverse conditions, we achieved good results in 22, and we're assuming that we will continue to generate record results in 2023. Our forecast comes with a lot of growth, 4% for the, for adjusted earnings, EUR 40.8 billion. Free cash flow is expected to rise to more to EUR 16 billion, which is an increase by more than 40%. You can see Deutsche Telekom continues to grow. Now I am looking forward to your questions. We are, in fact. Excellent. There was a request for the floor here, first of all, let me explain how this works. You can either ask questions right here in the room.
You can also join us on the Webex session. I understand you already got some information about that up front. You can send us questions on the chat.
First question comes from the room. I'm from dpa. Thank you. I have a question on FTTH. You said that in 2023, you will not only connect 2.5 million households, but 3,000,000 Households. Is this a new forecast or was that a well-known fact before? Does that include GlasfaserPlus or not? My second question is, your competitor O2 announced in Germany that they want to rise their mobile communications prices by 10%. Do you have any similar plans? If so, yes or no, and why?
Well, first of all, sometimes I tend to be a little blunt, and sometimes I, you know, put people under pressure. The 2.5 is the, is the cautious prediction, and three is my personal ambition level. I think we can connect 3,000,000 . This is our internal ambition level, if you like. It's just because I see that this machine is running so smoothly, and I can see that our teams are working flat out to push ahead with the optical fiber rollout. You might want to take the three. Last year, I think Mr. Gayek said he'll never make it to the two. Well, we did. We actually made it 2.1, and now our internal ambition level is three. I really want to, you know, forge ahead with this optical fiber build-out.
The 3,000,000 is including GlasfaserPlus, right?
Yes. Would you like to take the second question? Well, this is not a proper reply. We don't make any comments on price increases or MNAs unless they materialize. I'm afraid we decline any comments on whether we consider this or not. We will inform you about any decisions that may be made in the future. Please bear with us. Okay, Mrs. Manneke will be next.
I mean, if business is working well, then you might want to think about how to make it possible for your staff to, you know, have a bigger share. For instance, are you considering to pay a higher inflation bonus to your employees? I do remember that the wage agreement from last year includes a one-off payment to the lower wage brackets. Inflation obviously is something that affects all wage groups, right? All wage brackets.
First of all, yes, of course, we want our employees to have their share in our success. For instance, we launched a very successful stock program. You buy one share or you buy three shares and you get one on top. This is the program that we've set up, and it has turned out to be very successful. Now that the share price is up, of course, it has turned out to be even better. Secondly, Deutsche Telekom always aims to, you know, give our employees certainty. I remember during the first COVID wave, we concluded a wage agreement, you know, remotely by video, to give certainty to our employees to protect them from compulsory layoffs, and that included a raise. We also paid a COVID bonus.
Now in the spring, we had wage talks again with the employee representatives, and in December, we renegotiated that deal, and we paid an energy bonus to people who are making less than EUR 75,000. That's another bonus that we paid on top of anything else. As for the future, we will look into what we can do, whether we can pay more bonuses, because, I mean, the previous bonuses were not only for one year, but they will be paid until 2024. Whenever there is a bottleneck, we always support our staff whenever they find themselves in an emergency situation, we have relevant funds available for that. When you look at the entire package, first of all, wage increases, which is an ongoing thing, then ruling out compulsory layoffs, plus paying bonuses and the stock or the share program.
All that combined shows that Deutsche Telekom is a highly attractive employer. By the way, our wages and salaries are way above what is paid by Vodafone, O2, and 1&1. We are way above this sector. We've consistently increased wages and salaries while at the same time offering a secure workplace. It's about continuity, you see? It's not about, so much about, individual steps that may only be relevant for a limited period of time.
We'll now continue with Mr. Allison. There is Mr. Kowalewski on the WebEx, and then we'll continue with Mr. Muller here.
I have two questions. First of all, you said that at T-Mobile, you now hold a stake of 49.6%. When are you going to reach the magical level of 50%? Secondly, you said that the proceeds from the sale of GD Towers will have an effect in the first quarter. Will this only have an impact on your debt ratio, or will it also have an impact on other financial KPIs? If so, which ones?
You see, not only do I sleep well at night, I actually focus on something else rather than just thinking about our majority stake in T-Mobile US. Let me remind you, we have an agreement in place with SoftBank. We can buy, you know, shares, for a price of $101, and we are getting more shares from SoftBank if we want to. We have the rights for that.
By that, we will have a mixed share price that will be, you know, completely different from the current one because it comes with price guarantees. Plus we have a forward for certain shares. We can get certain shares based on that forward share price. The share buyback will also continue. We said that this year we will do an EUR 11 billion share buyback and the EUR 14 billion for 2022 and 2023 will be achieved, you know, in shareholder remuneration as a result. So this is all happening right now and it is, as safe as can be. Let me add to the forwards. We hedged 20 million shares with a forward. So we made sure that we have access to millions of T-Mobile shares here. Last night there was a filing with the SEC.
This is currently reversed because we no longer need it. This also shows that the 50% stake is not so much in the distant future. What you said about the EUR 10.7 billion in cash. When you look at net debt, we have a reduction of 0.2 turns due to the EUR 10.7 billion. Once we deconsolidate, we will have leasing liabilities because we have a final consolidation, and that is -0.1 for the net debt ratio.
We are leaving this room and Mr. Kowalewski is next. I hope that he can hear us. Hello, Mr. Kowalewski. Over to you.
I have a cold and a cough, and that's why I didn't come to the meeting today in person. I didn't want to make anybody else sick with what I have. All the best. I have a question very briefly. When you get past 50% at T-Mobile US, will that have an impact on the consolidation? Will revenue increase dramatically as a result? I understood you don't want to say anything about price increases. Well, if you...
You know. We don't want to make any forecast in that regard. We have a proxy agreement with SoftBank, so this consolidation, no matter how you look at it, is below 50% now. We want to keep this relationship over time long-term, and this proxy statement will expire in 2024, and so we will have to increase above 50%, but that won't have any impact on the consolidation. Everything will stay the same as it is today. The higher our percentage, our stake in America is, the greater our earnings per share. If I have 51% or 52%, of course, it has an impact on earnings per share. We're talking about 50+ right now for the time being.
Okay, let's continue with questions from people here in the room. I'd be interested, Mr. Höttges, we've heard about the U.S., the stake there, the targets in the capital market have been achieved. The deals have been concluded at the right time. Now, what is the next big project in the pipeline? Are you just going to sit back and administrate what you have achieved?
That's a great question. Yeah. First of all, I'm not the kind of guy that likes to just administrate what we've achieved in the past. I need action and something I like. I like big things when they happen. Telecom, with all the success we've had, we have still our work cut out for us. First of all, the question, how can Deutsche Telekom leverage its scale, its size that it's achieved internationally? We're talking about the platform. How can we make offers to customers that work well everywhere? How can we offer platform services like the CPaaS model? How can we make this available to the customers in a way that's easy to operate?
Connectivity. Connectivity runs the danger of becoming commoditized, there could be a price drop there. If that takes place, then we need to grow in areas outside of connectivity. It could be areas like PayTech. It could be in the business customer segment. It could be things like unified communications. That's why we are concentrating on our business customers. With Magenta, we want to offer our customers additional benefits. We want to go beyond core and look where growth potential is to be found. Another area where we have to improve, we will never be finished with our networks, improving our networks. It's like the rabbit and the hare, or the tortoise and the hare. We will have to permanently invest in infrastructure to improve it.
Every gray area on the motorway, on the highway, we have to close these gaps out there. In Bavaria, we'll be advertising with a poster that we are offering. We want to accelerate the build out there and are running into headwinds there. This has to be financed, and it doesn't just help when you build out the network in the countryside. Fiber optics has to be attractive enough to customers that they want it. Homes passed is one thing, but homes connected is another. We want to monetize 5G, and in particular, fiber optic build-out needs to be accelerated along with all the benefits for customers. Cause a big problem in Germany is that we are building out fiber optics, but not all the customers go for it and use it.
Also, I'm keeping a close eye on the European market. It's too fragmented. On Monday, I'm gonna be giving a keynote address on this topic. You know what? European sovereignty has to also be reflected in the telecommunications market. Without that, digitization won't work. We're much too fragmented in our industry. What do we have to do to consolidate our industry? What kind of regulatory framework conditions do we need so that Europe can invest more in per capita in our infrastructure compared to China and the U.S.? I'm not satisfied with the situation right now, and I want to really reflect on how we can develop an organization in terms of all its structures that is sustainable in every way. How can we achieve by 2025 to be completely CO2 neutral using only regenerative energy sources for telecommunication services?
As an energy user, we have to think about things like PPAs, Power Purchase Agreements, for example, that have a direct impact on use of regenerative energy sources. I am also thinking deeply about, like in the U.S., I'm looking at synergies there. This is probably the biggest and most successful merger that's ever taken place in the telecommunications industry in the U.S. The question is, well, how about the future? Where are we going to achieve growth? Because we're the market leader in the U.S., and we have to ask ourselves, are there new business models, like mobile substitution or other models where we can leverage our and further develop our mobile telecommunications network? Also in the B2B segment, we wanna be stronger in America. Another issue is up-and-coming talent. We have 3,500 vacant positions for software experts here.
If we can't find these people, then we have to find these people in the international labor market. We have to find out where these people are and how we can win them to work for Deutsche Telekom in the different segments. To become the leading digital telco, we need these capacities and these skills and skill sets. For young people and for the new skill sets, that's key. I'll stop there, but our plan has worked well so far, and I thank you for your feedback, and that's how we see things too. Telekom can't rest on its laurels because that sows the seeds for decline. That's why we have to really, you know, reach out there and grab the opportunities. That's the motivation for me. Just a brief commentary from the defense. We haven't achieved our goals for 2024 yet. Looking at the big picture, that will be, of course, a challenge, but we have achieved our targets to date.
Mr. Greg, you're the next on the list. If you press the button, then the light will go on, and you can ask your question.
Good morning. Once again, turning to the fiber optics market, this company, hello Fiber, has gotten out of the business, and there was a video on YouTube. A colleague from Telekom said, commented on this saying this could happen to other companies, too. What do you expect to happen there? Open access, that's a hot topic right now. The competition are saying that there's no agreement so far with this regard. What is your plan there? Do you have to conclude an individual agreement with every provider out there, or is there a hope that you can all get down, sit down at a table and come to an agreement? Also, today is SMS Cell Broadcast. They've gone into operations and... There was an alarm that was sent out from northern Germany regarding the Cell Broadcast on Monday, and it didn't arrive in southern Germany.
Look, getting all these people together to provide this information through a mobile telecommunications antenna and then asking whether there's shortages or bottlenecks, and we've done t-tests like this, and we want to do these mass tests. It was focused on Cologne, but it was a quality test that we carried out, and I'm very pleased. I'm the one that called on Cell Broadcast to do this. We have this functionality in the network, and then the government said that we don't need it. When this disaster took place, we said, "Why don't we have it? We have it in all other European countries. We need it in Germany." This initiative was begun, and I'm very pleased.
Second question, overbuild.
First of all, I would like to ask all of you. You know, for years and years, you've been saying in your articles, "When will there finally be infrastructure competition in Germany? Something needs to happen." Now we have this competition in Germany, and now there is a debate to the effect of, "Now why don't we establish national or regional monopolies?" Well, I don't quite understand that. We have competition in Germany, and that's good. By the way, Deutsche Telekom always said, "We can't complete the optical fiber build-out all by ourselves. We can't do the 100%," which is why we need, you know, to bring in others as well. I'm pleased that there is competition and that our competitors are supporting us.
The most important thing is that Deutsche Telekom, being the largest company in this field, needs to get the biggest chunk. We have committed ourselves to that. We will roll out optical fiber in 60% of this country, and this is also an obligation vis-à-vis our customers. Wherever others are building something, we are talking to them. By the way, if they give us passive infrastructure access, then we set up partnerships, for instance, in Münster or in Munich.
There are areas where we fail to reach agreement or where there is no access to infrastructure. Mr. Gayek, are we then supposed to say, "Okay, there's nothing Deutsche Telekom can do?" There are loads of customers there who'd like to work with us. I just went to one of these areas and talked to the customers myself, and they said, "Well, finally, you're here. We've been waiting for Deutsche Telekom for ages because we want to stay with Telekom." They don't even want to leave, but where they are waiting for the build-out. Then I can't possibly say, "Okay, just, you know, okay, we'll leave it up to our competitors to roll out the infrastructure wherever it pays off the most, and we do the rest." Nobody can expect that from us. The last thing that I would like to say is this.
When I then look at what Mr. Lepel from NetCologne says, he seemed to be upset about us overbuilding his infrastructure. He's not rolling out the optical fiber right through to the customer. Homes connected. I mean, FTTB, that there is no point in that, is there? We want to have 1 GB optical fiber lines, right? We are building there now because NetCologne isn't. If he doesn't want to do that, then it's up to him. It's only because he hasn't been able to connect his customers to the optical fiber network. We are doing it now. The last thing, and this, again, this is something that we've told you about before. In Germany, we need to be able to fully utilize the infrastructure. You need to have a proper ARPU, average revenue per customer, in order to amortize your investments.
We've talked about trenching and things like that for ages. Rolling out the network in Germany is much more expensive than in other countries. Spain, EUR 200 per line, Germany, EUR 1,600 per line. I mean, you all know it. I don't even have to repeat it here. There is civil engineering. We have different planning systems. Our construction companies are more expensive than in other countries. All that needs to be taken into account. If I develop a business case for an optical fiber line in Germany, then the question is, what is the level of utilization and what ARPU can I expect on this infrastructure to amortize my investment? I've heard and seen that a lot of companies were expecting a 60% level of utilization and EUR 60 of ARPU.
We told them, "Guys, it's not gonna work like that." German customers tend to be more cautious. They tend to be slower. They take a close look before they decide that they want to use the optical fiber infrastructure, which is why we set ourselves different targets regarding utilization. Maybe this means that the ROSI is not quite as good either. If you want to make a quick EUR with optical fiber in Germany, then you'll have a hard time doing that. That's why we've seen a couple of exits in this field recently. Let me just add to this. We are talking about an absolute minority. As you've heard, we now have 2,000,000 homes connected, and we are moving towards three. We are talking about an absolute minority, and I think that this subject is overrated. You know, we're talking about cases here that are only relevant to a small number of people.
Mr. Brunner is next, then there are more questions. Okay, let me use this mic here.
Let me talk about a regulatory policy with a view to the upcoming frequency auction. There is a debate on service provider obligations. This will also be relevant to you. Current politicians of the so-called traffic light coalition support the current approach. How do you look at it? Do you think that ultimately you will have to prepare yourselves for more competition?
Well, first of all, for us, you know, the most important thing is what the customer says. If the customer says to us, "You are the most reliable brand," then that's good. We are winning market share. Right now we are getting a lot of enthusiasm, you know, for all the things that we do, online accolades, et cetera. Anything to do with regulation, you know, what the regulator says to me is secondary here. You mentioned the auction, let me remind you of what is happening here. We had an auction that gave us a lot of headache because we said we would like to rather invest this money for our customer in infrastructure, but now we need to give it to the government in order to acquire more spectrum instead. Spectrum became scarce. Let me ask you, what happened about a fourth of this spectrum that had been reserved for industry? How is the spectrum actually used for the people out there today, for the citizens?
Because that's what this is all about. What they did is they artificially made spectrum scarce so that three players were able to use it, but not four. They had four players anyway, and one player was granted extreme privileges. The new entrant, 1&1, was granted major privileges in order to get the spectrum. Footnote, they also need to meet certain conditions, just like all of us. 1&1 , need 1,000 mobile antennas, and they should have built 1,000 or installed 3,000 of them, and they set up three. There's no right for 1&1 to set up this network. They just wanted to get access to our networks from O2, Vodafone, and us, because we continue to roll out the network and 1&1 just wanted to get access to that.
The service provider obligation means that another company can, you know, use the networks from the companies that are really investing in this infrastructure. If it really came to that, I think it would be misguided. It would mean that some companies have to bear all the costs of the infrastructure rollout and others would just benefit from that. Look at all the money that we are investing in infrastructure. The next thing is this. We've heard time and again that we are not meeting the conditions for the network build out. Let me be quite clear here and I am assuring you, Deutsche Telekom is not among those who are not meeting their rollout obligations. We did meet our rollout obligations. Which is why I don't want to be put in the same box here with all the other competitors.
I mean, our network build out was so much bigger than that of our competitors. I don't even have to give you the exact numbers right now. I believe we need to invest in infrastructure in Germany. You also need to enable companies to make such investments, companies who have the necessary funds. What we don't need right now is new privileges for some companies, a new service provider obligation which just grants some companies a right to gain access to our networks. That reminds me of some dire times, you know, and that was the reason why Europe was lagging behind in this field for so long, and Germany in particular. Incidentally, compared to our European peers, and please take a look at the facts here, we are among the top five in Europe with our network, T-Mobile Deutschland. This is the result of several studies. It is also confirmed by our coverage. We have 34,000 mobile communication sites in Germany, and in 2022 we set up 1,200 new sites alone. These are numbers. If you compare them to 1&1 or Vodafone, it's a huge difference. Basically, these figures speak for themselves.
Maybe one sentence on Freenet.
You know, I'm a little confused. I mean, we've known each other for ages in this industry. The CFO said that he's got very good relations with Deutsche Telekom, and he said that he looks at us at one of his most important partners for cooperation. Freenet, I mean, things are working smoothly there, and they are one of our partners. We're here at our press conference now and yes, the Freenet business is working very well.
I'm quoting from the last call here. All relevant KPIs are showing a positive trend, ARPU revenue margin and free cash flow. We've increased our profitability, and I'm quoting them here. Resilience of the mobile business model has been reconfirmed. I'm just reading this off a piece of paper here. Complaining seems to be normal for those who are buying from us at wholesale prices. Let me tell you quite clearly, I think there's a good balance here between the wholesale product and the infrastructure range. We believe Freenet is an important partner of ours, and I think that their business is good and that's what they just communicated when they presented their results. They raised the dividend as well.
Yes, they did.
Probably they're just complaining for the sake of it. That seems to be part of the deal. Needless to say, we are in talks with them bilaterally and we want to maintain this important partnership.
The next question.
A couple of weeks ago or two weeks ago it was, there was an incident that a lot of people in this country found amusing. It was about Lufthansa. There were four optical fiber cables which were damaged by an excavator. As a result, the Lufthansa booking systems collapsed and that incurred a major damage. What are your contractual relationships with Lufthansa on the one hand and with Deutsche Bahn on the other? Because this may be relevant in terms of damages. Maybe there's a risk of litigation here.
The second thing, this is a question to Mr. Höttges. A big business magazine reported that you may reconsider your current position. I understand that you like to take on new challenges. You said that there are still a lot of challenges at Deutsche Telekom, but nonetheless, you've been working for this company for a long time. Mrs. Nemat has been mentioned as a possible successor to you. Do you think it would be good for a modern company as Deutsche Telekom to appoint a female as your successor? Where do you see yourself in five years from now?
First of all, on the Lufthansa incident This was a very grave incident, by the way. The fact is that there was, it was as a building site along a railway line, and an excavator was working in a depth of 5 meters, and this is how the optical fiber cable of Deutsche Telekom was cut. By the way, this optical fiber cable was not only connected to Lufthansa, but I mean, there were like not necessarily hundreds of customers, but big customers. For instance, you know, air traffic controllers, at the airport, Fraport, you know, ground handling, all these services were also covered by this cable. We have concluded so-called redundancy contracts, with some of our customers, which means we have to make sure that whenever something goes wrong, we can activate redundant systems quickly.
By the way, this is exactly what happened with all the customers that I just mentioned. There were no problems with Fraport and the others. We just switched over to the redundant system, and then we had some time to fix this damaged cable. I can't say anything on behalf of Lufthansa obviously. You would have to ask them whether they had a redundant system in place as well and how this all came about. This whole technical situation is very complex, very much intertwined, and it is currently being analyzed in detail. All I can say is I was impressed with the speed at which the Telekom staff solved the problem. I mean, I don't know if you've ever seen in a video, how you can fix such a cable. How you can reconnect both ends of this cable.
It's very complex. You might also want to raise this question with Lufthansa. We supported them wherever we could, and we also offered them our support. I think, thereby we met our obligations. Sounds simple, fiber optic cable, but it's this diameter. There's a 1,000 bundles of fiber optic cables in this, and they're all very fine and that at a depth of 5 meters that had to be spliced together by technicians lying down. So it was quite a challenge. Yeah, that was a serious damage case. I have a year year contract here, and that's why. That means I have a commitment here to the company, and I have a lot to do at Telekom, and I try to do my best.
I find this discussion taking place in the public realm, who would be the right person to head Telekom? International, national, gender specific. I think it's a great discussion to see how people in the public area think about things. It's I take it as a compliment that people are looking discussing who my successor will be. I also think this discussion in the public area, it's not harmful. On the contrary, I think it's a good discussion, and I have to keep an eye on this discussion. At some point, I won't be at Deutsche Telekom anymore. As much as I love it here, and I'm realistic, and I don't want to be a Methuselah working here at Deutsche Telekom.
Yeah. I have one question from the chat.
Christian, OTE in Greece, do we have any divestiture plans there?
Well, there is zero substance behind this question. We issued a press release that we are not considering selling any of our stake in the company in Greece there, OTE. There's no reason, no substance behind this rumor. Yeah. When I was the CFO, that was during the financial crisis and OTE was insolvent. Now it's a real pearl in our portfolio, and we're by far the business leader there. Also, we're building out fiber optic and 5G on a massive scale, and we have an excellent business segment there, one of the highest market shares in our group. Our shareholder is over 50% of our share there. We have no interest at all in any divestiture. That's pure fake news.
Okay. Mr. Talbot.
I have a question. You mentioned the labor shortage or shortage of skilled labor at Telekom. In Russia, you helped 100 staff members leave Russia and go to Turkey. Is the door for business in Russia closed, definitively closed, and never can be opened or? Business there and also as a source of skilled workers? Yeah. The door is closed right now.
Business has been closed. Our business has been closed down in Russia and terminated. At present, in the given geopolitical situation, I don't see any future for Deutsche Telekom or further developments for us in Russia. Things can always improve and change. We all know what the situation is there right now. We have helped about 1,000 people, or rather we made an offer to about 1,000 people in Russia to work at telecom offices in the rest of Europe. We're very pleased at the number of them that accepted this offer. They have come to us with their families from Russia, and they had the option of selecting between different sites where they could work in the future.
Turkey was only a, kind of an intermediate stop on the way for these people on the way to their final destination. They're no longer in Turkey. They've arrived at their destinations with their families. A large number of them, just to answer also the question about OTT, went to Thessaloniki. More than 200, I think about 400, of these Russians went to Thessaloniki in Greece. We have a big hub in Spain as well. Not in Barcelona, but in Granada, where we have also placed our Russian colleagues working for T-Systems. Also, we have placed some of them in Russia, Hungary, and Poland, where we're building a new T Hub, where we have a concentrating on software developers there. Some of them have been sent there.
I think it's a win-win situation for the company and for these people and their families. I look upon this project as being completed. Just to avoid any misunderstandings. We weren't active in Russia in the business field. We just had a software development unit there. The question doesn't arise as to whether we will be resuming business operations because we didn't have it anymore. We divested it many years ago, and we had a stake in a company there, but we divested it, and we had 2,000 staff members there, and about 1,000 accepted our offer. Right.
That brings us to the end of the list of questions. Mr. Buten, we have written down your question on FTTH, and we'll be answering that, but we have to do a little research first. With that, I would thank you all for listening. It was nice to have you here once again in person. It's nice to see faces after having heard your voices on the telephone. Some of you we'll see on Monday. The Mobile World Congress will begin in Barcelona. Tim and I will be looking forward to seeing you there. We're scheduling a press conference for 12:00 P.M., we will have a media and policy evening. For those of you who cannot travel to Barcelona, we'll stream all the events as well. Have a look on the net. If you want to hear about some of the new things we'll be rolling out in Barcelona, have a pleasant journey home. See you again next time.