Thank you for standing by. I am Kelly, your Chorus Call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Turkcell's conference call to present and discuss the Turkcell's initial take on COVID-19. All participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Korhan Bilek, Treasury and Capital Markets Director. Mr. Bilek, you may now proceed.
Thank you, Kelly. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. In this call, we aim to provide you with a brief overview of how the COVID-19 crisis has impacted our business operations, as well as the immediate actions we have taken and how we see the long-term opportunities in the post-crisis era. We will also hold a Q&A session at the end of the call. Before we continue, I would like to kindly remind you to review the last page of this presentation for our safe harbor statement. I will now leave the floor to our CFO, Mr. Osman Yılmaz. Please, sir.
Thank you, Korhan. Good morning and good afternoon, everyone. It is very strange how drastically our life has changed in only a month. The COVID-19 pandemic has been disruptive for the whole world in various aspects at different levels. Each and every one of us has been working to adapt our lives to the new conditions. At Turkcell, we prioritize from inside out, taking a set of actions swiftly that concerns all of our stakeholders. Employee health, uninterrupted service, and liquidity management has been on top of our list. Working in 1,500 reach function, we closely monitor the situation and analyze its impacts on our KPIs and our annual plan. Obviously, telecommunication services have become more vital than ever, a necessity to continue with our work lives, our kids' education, as well as for entertainment at home.
As such, the sector has so far been defensive, along with food and healthcare sectors. We also observe a fast-forward digitalization, both on consumer and corporate fronts. We trust that this behavioral change is likely to be permanent, given the duration and hence the availability of our unique portfolio of digital services and solutions, which will position us favorably in the post-crisis era. Yet, we are aware of the potential risks arising from limited mobility and possibility of a prolonged scenario. Given the ambiguity and uncertainty, it is as yet early to discuss how our company performance would unfold under different scenarios. Rest assured, Turkcell management is fully aware of how we should respond under each, from conservative to worst case. Moving to next slide. Let me start by summarizing the actions taken by the Turkish government and several regulatory bodies.
The list on this slide is not exhaustive. Frankly, new measures are announced almost every day. The first case was recorded in Turkey a month ago on March 10th. Within a week, all schools were closed by announcing an earlier-than-planned spring break and continuation of through online education thereafter. Places that motivate social gatherings, including restaurants, were closed as of March 21st. A curfew was announced for the most at-risk group, for example, the elderly and those with chronic disease. The curfew has recently been extended to cover youngsters. These measures are strictly practiced, particularly in large cities. With all flights being suspended, encounter travel is also restricted. Besides these measures to ensure social distancing, several monetary and fiscal measures have also been announced.
As such, an economic stability shield package worth TRY 100 billion was announced that includes the rescheduling of tax duties, loan repayments, social security payments, and also incentive for businesses, among others. Turkey Central Bank cut the weekly policy rate by 100 basis points to 9.75% with few liquidity measures for banks. State banks are encouraged to provide loans at below the policy rate to those in need. A cap on dividend payments was also put in place by the Ministry of Trade and confirmed by the Ministry of Treasury and Finance, limiting the payout with 25%. We currently read the decision as overriding our dividend policy. In any case, we, along with many other listed companies, are on hold regarding a call for the general assembly given the circumstances. Moving to the next slide. Let me continue with a summary of what Turkcell's immediate actions have been so far.
Actually, our immediate response concerned our human capital. Our employees, including over 10,000 call center agents, have been working remotely since March 13th. Our ICT systems have successfully endured the stress test of such a load. On the consumer front, we have eased the lives of those using the remote education portal and channels, our esteemed healthcare workers, and those subscribers still abroad. We immediately responded to the call for the closure of stores at the shopping malls. The bulk of our exclusive channels remain open for limited hours on six days of the week, as well as non-exclusive sales points. We encourage our customers to use our digital channels, namely our website and our digital operator application. We bear the fruits of having made good level of investment on our infrastructure. Our network operations have been running smoothly as we make use of artificial intelligence for optimization.
The teams are on alert with backup capacity in standby mode and with critical equipment orders have already been submitted. On the balance sheet front, liquidity management has been the most critical topic on which we have increased our focus. To that end, we hold financial risk management meetings on a daily basis, and the teams conduct dynamic revenue forecasting. Also, where possible, we have implemented cost control measures. Regardless, collection risk in some segments remains a concern. The trends of which we monitor very closely. Moving to next slide. Let me now elaborate on how this crisis has reflected to our business from the perspective of our three strategic focus areas. First, with our digital services, we have been offering alternative entertainment sources as well as platforms for communications to everyone for the past few years.
As such, our communication platform, BiP, has seen tenfold increase in group video calls and our TV platform, TV+, has recorded a doubling of data usage. People have been reading 75% more magazines and newspapers on our digital publishing platform, Dergilik. We are pleased to capture the rising demand for these products with our own digital services. Secondly, regarding our digital business solutions for corporates, our teams have been extremely busy in ensuring 24/7 business continuity for all our clients. We see a considerable increase in demand from the enterprise segment to enhance their remote working and education capabilities. This is a promising trend for the future. Given the importance of ongoing city hospital projects, they are accelerated with the call from the governmental bodies. This month, we will be opening the largest city hospital this month.
Certain sectors and companies that are impacted severely by the pandemic create a potential for the risk for this business line in terms of business continuity and collection. Thirdly, in our Fintech services, Paycell has been busy capturing the business potential stemming from increasing demand for cashless payment methods. We observe a solid rise in usage of Paycell services, including online payment and direct carrier billing. The risk we attach to this strategic focus is the merchant acquisition through physical channels to slow down under these circumstances. Next slide. Now let's look at some figures from the last week of March. This is the period when the majority of social precautions were taken, including remote education and work. We have chosen this period with the week a month ago to compare before and after the current situation.
Overall, total network traffic has increased by almost 35%, even up to 50% in peak hours. One would expect the bulk of this increase to have come from the fixed network, registering over 110% increase during some hours. The mobile network carried record high traffic at over 500 TB per day. TV+ and BiP increased their popularity with tenfold increase in group video calls and 15% higher logins to TV. Regarding subscriptions, postpaid acquisition numbers were down 35%, whereas subscription to fixed broadband rose by 52%. Both businesses have seen an improvement in churn levels given the limited mobility. On the retail network front, visitors to our website and application ramp up by 30% and 76% respectively. We also recorded 20% higher bill payments through Paycell app. Next slide. Let me update you on the status of our international business. For Ukraine, quarantine rules still apply there.
Telecom stores are allowed to remain open, but we encourage our customers to use our digital channels. While the market is prepaid dominant and remains vulnerable to the limitation of mobility, we have recorded some increase in both mobile and voice usage. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian competition board has recommended a halt to price increases. The progress in IMF agreement talks have stabilized the financial markets and strengthened the currency in recent weeks. In Belarus, there is no official quarantine, but the public is gradually refraining from being mobile. This has led to a decline in store traffic, impacting subscriber acquisitions and handset sales negatively. In the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, the overall economy and the telecom sector are more vulnerable given the dependency on tourism and international students. Demand for student tariffs as well as handset sales have significantly declined. Next slide.
As we have been discussing during our quarter calls, pursuing a prudent FX risk management has been among the success factors of our business model. This has helped us to enter this fragile period with a long FX position of $150 million. Our average debt maturity is around five years, and we fund working capital requirement through bank loans matching the maturity of our obligations. Our liquidity position offers us sufficient buffer to sustain our operations with $1.7 billion cash in hard currency and only $1 billion debt service in three years, excluding short-term local currency loans. We have available credit lines from diversified funding sources, both from local banks and international banks. The potential for a further slowdown in consumer finance business will also mean additional working capital release. Next slide. This slide features the major challenges and risks we anticipate at this stage.
Again, this list shall not be considered exhaustive, but simply a list of risk factors we identify for the time being. Obviously, the decline in consumer traffic at physical stores has impacted our consumer acquisitions. On the other hand, the mobile number portability market also lost momentum, contributing positively to our churn levels. Customer traffic decline has also negatively impacted top-up levels in the prepaid segment, particularly those in the habit of visiting our stores and transacting in cash. The prepaid segment is a smaller part of our subscriber base, with less than 20% revenue share in Turkcell Turkey mobile revenues. In corporate segment, certain industries and SMEs have been vulnerable given the direct severe impact of the pandemic. Payment deferrals and temporary discounts will be under discussion with these customers. SMEs have some 10% in Turkcell Turkey revenues. One revenue line, namely roaming, is clearly at risk.
Roaming revenues in total are around 3% of our consolidated revenues. Roaming costs will also significantly come down, limiting the impact on margins. Our consumer finance business is subject to further slowdown given the decline in device sales under limited mobility. BRSA's resolution on deferral of loan payments will potentially increase the cost of risk in this business. On the macro front, any rise in unemployment coupled with decreasing purchasing power is also likely to negatively impact our overall business. Next slide. As with every crisis, this one, we believe, also offers a few opportunities, some of which we expect to monetize only when the dust settles.
While some companies may have been caught flat-footed given their belated digitalization, thanks to our digital transformation over the past few years, our service and solutions, as well as availability of digital channels, have positioned us favorably both now and also for the future. The disaster has been instrumental accelerating the digitalization of both consumers and corporates. We expect to see a greater demand for our services supporting remote work, online education, and e-commerce, in addition to entertainment services. Our fixed wireless access product, Superbox, has increased its popularity as it is still the sole alternative to fiber-like speed. We have observed 125% increase in Superbox acquisitions. Superbox was already popular with more than 400,000 subscribers, and now consumers increasingly prefer Superbox due to difficulties in connecting to VC and school systems with copper-based solutions. One particular area, upload speeds, is also very limited due to technical capabilities of ADSL.
In the Techfin area, the cashless payment methods have become more popular than ever. Demand for mobile payments has surged. We trust that the change in consumer habits will be there to stay, paving the way for long-term contribution to our Paycell operations. Next slide. Before we end our call and switch to Q&A session, I would like to recap our key messages of today. Telecom services have always been critical in the daily lives of most of us, this pandemic has made them even more critical for almost anyone. Continuity of work, education, and life itself has become dependent on telecom services. As such, we trust that Turkcell is well positioned to meet the rising demand with its quality, vast portfolio of solutions, and extensive sales force.
The accelerated digitalization of both consumer and corporate enhances the opportunities for business and entertainment, which only emphasizes the higher demand we expect for our digital services and solutions. Optimization of our channel costs with a faster-than-planned shift to digital channels will also contribute to our profitability positively. Potential risks do lie in certain areas and for certain segments, including roaming income, prepaid top-ups, and for SMEs. Risk of disruption to the global supply chain may also emerge depending on the duration of this crisis. All in all, balance sheet quality and cash strengths are vital to the sustainability of operations during this period. Our balance sheet remains robust with some $ 1.7 billion cash in hand and our long FX position. This brings us to the end of our presentation. I now would like to open the floor for the Q&A session. Thank you very much.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. The first question is from the line of Cesar Tiron with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, everyone. Thanks for the call. Thanks for allowing questions. I have two, actually. The first one would be on your network and how this 35% kind of unexpected increase in usage, how is the network coping with it? Second, on the potential impact from the corporate segment, do you already see any risks from bad debt, things like that, SMEs asking you for discounts, or you haven't faced it as of yet? Thank you so much.
Cesar, thank you very much for your questions. On your network questions, actually, Turkcell is the most prepared network operator for this sudden capacity increase. So far we have witnessed 35% increase on our network. When if we split it in two parts, mobile and fixed, we see about 40% on the fixed part and about 20% on the mobile network. The mobile network capacity increase is mainly coming from our Superbox product, our fixed wireless access product. Due to limited mobility excluding the Superbox, the traffic increase is not significant. Actually, we have been investing a lot on our network since 2016, especially on our mobile network. Because in 2016, we switched to LTE, and since then we have been investing more than $1 billion each year to increase our coverage and also increase our network quality.
Turkcell is the second fastest mobile operator in Europe in terms of capacity. We are not much affected by these network increases. Actually, our network team also make use of artificial intelligence to optimize traffic load on network and actively manage the capacity, and we have been optimizing the new investments. Normally, in spring and summer periods, we invest more in southern parts of Turkey where the traffic becomes more intense due to tourism season and seasonality. Now, we switch these investments to the main cities like Istanbul, Ankara, where population density is higher and where mobility is now limited due to curfew decisions. Moreover, we also test the capacity on our network occasionally, and we already had done stress testers for these type of increases. We sometimes double the quota of our existing clients to stress test of an additional capacity increase, traffic increase on our network.
We can comfortably say that Turkcell's network is ready for such an increase, even for a prolonged scenario. On the second question, corporates. Actually, this is the most risky part, along with the roaming revenues, as I tried to highlight during the presentations. Actually, our corporate revenue shares on our total top line revenue is 15%-18%, and it mainly comes from larger segments, strategic accounts and public accounts, where we expect less risk in terms of collections and revenue declines. So far, SMEs has been asking for discounts, but the total number we have received so far is less than 1,000, which is insignificant given the total number of total subscribers. If this scenario prolongs, we can expect further demand for payment deferrals and extended discounts. Currently, we are not expecting a sudden surge in demand for discounts.
Government announced support for this segment. There are specific supports for this segment in terms of loan payment deferrals. To support employment, the government has announced subsidies for each employees for this segment. We are not expecting a particular problem from this sector. If this prolongs beyond June, July, it will be a bigger concern for our company as well. Initially, we can say that the risk is relatively lower.
Great. Thank you so much. Just one last question. Apologies. It wasn't part of your presentation, but I just wanted to check if you could comment on this legislation, which looks at capping the maximum of dividends companies are allowed to pay in Turkey this year. Is there anything you can share with us?
Actually, this also came as a surprise to us last week. First Minister of Trade, then confirmed by Minister of Treasury and Finance. We heard that a 25% dividend cap would be applied to all companies in Türkiye. I can say that this is still a draft legislation. This legislation is yet to be approved in the parliament. Certainly this overrides our dividend policy, which is to distribute at least 50% of the distributable net income. Also it contradicts with our former payout performance, which is more than 80% in the last five years.
This was an unexpected event. Please consider in practice that any prudent company and also government officials will wait and see the normalization of the crisis before removing this cap. This 25% cap does not change the practical situation, and hopefully if the situation normalizes maybe in the summer months, the cap might be removed, and we might talk about the normal trend of digital dividend payouts.
Thank you so much. Very helpful. Thank you again.
The next question is from the line of Vyacheslav Degtyarev with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you very much for the presentation. Two questions. Firstly, can you comment on the pricing outlook? Do you think you will continue inflationary price adjustments in the current macro environment? Secondly, are there any limitations on the buybacks, and can you potentially substitute the dividends with the buybacks? Thank you.
Actually, we can say that we are not in an inflationary. We are in a deflationary environment, given the sharp decline in oil prices and given the significantly lower demand. We will also see a deflationary environment in Turkey. Actually, Turkey was already in a disinflation path, and this will be accelerated by the recent plunge in commodity prices and plunge in the consumer demand. Despite depreciation of Turkish lira, we are not expecting a rise in inflation, and the FX pass-through will be significantly lower compared to previous periods on significantly lower demand. What I can say for now, we will not change our pricing in near future until the dust settles. Our aim is to upsell our customers to more favorable offers based on their usage needs, because in certain segments we see substantial increase in usage.
Our marketing team proactively offers these segments more favorable tariffs at higher prices. This will be our tactical strategy during this pandemic period. After the dust settles, we will continue to adjust our prices in line with the macroeconomic conditions and given the ongoing practices in our competition. Also for the competitors, all players in the market have shift their focus to ensure their services without interruption. We don't see any signs of price competition.
Given the fact that part of the retail channels have already been shut down, we see lower churn rates, which also works in favor of us. I think until midsummer, we will not see increasing competition and price changes in the market. For the second question, any limitations on buyback? Actually, government has not announced any limitations on buyback so far. Today I have seen a listed retail company to increase their buyback budget. Last month we received a mandate to increase our buyback budget by an additional TRY 150 million. We can use it when necessary. The market so far, since we got this mandate, market has been stable, and we didn't need to use this.
Okay. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
The next question is from the line of Erdem Akçaoğlu with BGP. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you for the presentation. I have two questions. The first one is, considering the current environment, would you think that you can reach your 2020 guidance, or is there any upside or downside risks or a major downside risk? What would you say or comment on that? Second one is, when do you plan to release the board decision on the dividend payout ratio and what date would be for the general assembly? Thank you.
Actually, it's important to tell that telecom industry, compared to other sectors, will see a limited impact from this pandemic. Anyhow, we see some downside risks to our guidance and our annual operating plan for 2020. So far in March, we haven't seen any shift from annual operating plan. In early April, we see initial signs of slowdown in certain segments, including roaming and corporate segments. For example, roaming revenues make 3% of our top line, and we see a sharp slowdown in roaming because all internationals and flights have been suspended. Also demand from corporates significantly came down. Most of the business has been closed since mid-March, and we have started to see initial impacts in April. I think in late April, when we are about to announce our Q1 financials, we will be able to give more color on 2020 guidance.
Honestly, it will be a relatively downside rather than an upside shift, especially in terms of revenues. We aim to keep our profitability stable by taking necessary cost-cutting measures, because some of the revenue declines will also decline our costs. All in all, we will be able to give you a much reasonable and comfortable figure for the outlook in late April. The date for AGM, I think the date for the AGM will be discussed during the board meeting in late April. But currently, all AGMs have been postponed due to existing conditions in the country. The board will discuss the potential date for the AGM. As soon as these restrictions are lifted, we are planning to gather AGM to get the decision on dividends and other core protections.
Thank you.
The next question is from the line of Mandaci Ece with ÜNLÜ Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you very much for the presentation. I have a few questions as well. One is a follow-up on your dividends guidance. You mentioned about the cap provided by the Ministry of Treasury. Should this be approved in the parliament first, or should we assume it as 25% payout is the final payout ratio for this year's dividends? Is there a possibility for higher dividends for next year, for example will there be a deferral of dividend payments? I understand that for the moment, you are not increasing the funds allocated for share buybacks you already made recently.
Second question is again about operations. You said there could be a downside risk to your revenue guidance of around 13%-16% for 2020. This is mostly due to lower roaming revenues and we will see some decline in consumer finance revenues. On the other hand, you're also highlighting higher data usage and possibly even higher share of postpaid subscribers. We will see mobile ARPU growth trend is sustaining for the H1 , particularly about CPI growth. Could you please also elaborate on the broadband ARPU generation? Thank you very much.
On your first question, dividends guidance. There is a draft omnibus bill which is still under discussion and which will probably be discussed in the parliament early next week. I think this dividend cap will also be a part of this omnibus bill. It has to be passed from the parliament. Both trade and finance ministers have declared that the cap will be applied throughout this year. All companies, including the non-listed ones, have shifted their dividend policy accordingly. Of course, if we were forced to postpone this dividend payment and if there's a cap, this will inevitably impact the payout for the next years. Turkcell has this type of irregularities over the last five years. There were periods when we couldn't distribute or distributed at lower payout rates. This was compensated in the following years. This might be a similar case.
If this is postponed or capped this year, it might be compensated in the following years. It is early to make a direct judgment on this dividend issue. If the things start to normalize, and if the things does not extend further to spring months, winter times, we can see that the government might remove this cap and the companies can shift back to their original dividend policies. On your second question, operational downside risks. Actually, the roaming is on top of the list because it is totally dependent on the tourism traffic, both incoming and outgoing traffic is impacting our roaming revenues. In addition to that, corporate revenue is much more cyclical than our consumer segment because 80% of the consumer revenues are contracted and there is no other alternative for this consumer to shift to other type of services.
In consumer segment, especially device sales and their investment for infrastructures will inevitably come down in the coming months. Consumer finance is the other segment that we expect lower revenue contribution in coming months. It was one of our businesses which was already slowing down since late 2018 on back of macroeconomic developments. The government had introduced caps for the maximum number of installments on device handset sales. We expect further slowdown in this business given limited mobility. The impact will be very small, and it will not cause a change in our top line standalone basis. Mobile ARPU growth trend. We still see strong ARPU growth in Q1. We will announce the figures in April 29th. We still see about 1/3 of our customers have been spending more than their quota, which gives us opportunity to upsell and to shift these customers to higher tariffs.
ARPU growth in near future will not come from price increases, rather, the ARPU growth can come from upsell efforts mainly. In addition to that, we will see lower churn rates, which will also be supportive our consumer revenues. On fixed broadband ARPU generation, actually, since last year, all fixed broadband quotas are unlimited, so it gives us a very limited scope for upsell. We are not expecting a significant increase in ARPU levels in fixed segment. For this year, I expect lower ARPU growth in fixed segment compared to mobile segment.
The next question is from the line of Kapacık Emre with UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi. Thank you very much for the presentation. It's great to have something this exhaustive and transparent, not many companies have done that. Thank you. Two questions from me, please. One is on the fixed wireless access. You're mentioning that that could be something that puts a bit of a strain on your network, and you're seeing huge growth in demand there. Now with streets presumably quite empty in a lot of places in Turkey, do you think that this could, for example, lead to higher expansion or faster expansion of your fiber network currently and then shifting some CapEx towards that direction? Second question, just a theoretical one. Do you think that there is a chance or probability of any regulatory changes from the current situation? Thank you.
For your first question on fixed wireless access. Actually, initially we planned this product to utilize our idle capacity on mobile network, because until last year, our investment in mobile network was more than some of the other operators in Turkey. We invested vastly on our mobile network, and we had an idle capacity, and Superbox was the best product to utilize this capacity. With the three times ARPU of an ADSL subscriber. For ADSL product, which is low quality and copper-based product with very low upload speeds, we are using Türk Telekom infrastructures, and we are dependent on these infrastructures. For fiber, we use our own fiber infrastructures. We have some constraints to make new investments in fiber rollouts. We cannot get approvals from the Ministry of Communications for new fiber expansion. Unfortunately, we cannot increase our home pass numbers since late 2018.
Superbox has been a very good suitable product in terms of replacing low-quality ADSL and also utilizing our mobile network. So far, we have not been witnessing a significant burden on our mobile network with this additional 400,000 Superbox customers. Of course, if this number grows further, this will require additional investment. We are not complaining from additional demand. If the additional demand comes, which means additional revenues, we will invest accordingly. Our network capacity is sufficient to cover additional demand coming from this segment, and we are ready to invest further if the demand increases further. So far, since early March, when the first effects of pandemic was felt in Turkey, demand for our Superbox products has increased by more than 125%, because this demand is parallel to the customer demand for more quality home broadband solutions.
We see many customers trying to switch from ADSL to Superbox, because with ADSL product, with very low upload speeds, you cannot connect to video conferencing systems. You will have problems with accessing to the online education portals, et cetera. We have been seeing a surging demand for Superbox products, we expect this trend to continue in coming months. Your second question on regulatory changes given the current situation. The omnibus bill, the draft bill includes also some changes for the sector, all of them are positive for our company. One significant among them is the change in type of contracts with the customers. The planned new regulation will allow customers to make digital contracts with the operators.
If it is approved, it will bring significant change to the industry because it will remove the burden of paperwork with the new contracts. This will allow us to make contracts through online channels. We have been investing in online channels for two years, including digital signatures, face recognition, and video call centers to acquire customers from digital channels. If this is approved, this will be a very positive change for the market, especially for Turkcell. Other than that, we are not expecting any price-related pressures from the regulator or ministries, because there have been some cases in other countries. We are not expecting a similar reaction from Turkish officials.
Thank you. One follow-up, if I may. Do you think this could accelerate, for example, the regulation around fiber wholesale? Making it more-
Actually, there are still ongoing discussions on fiber infrastructure sharing and easing the restrictions on Turkcell for additional fiber home pass investments. This is not related to pandemic-related regulation change. Today, all the streets are closed. Even if you want, you cannot invest in fiber, because the municipalities are not allowing for the new home pass infrastructure constructions. I think we will have much more positive developments in terms of fiber investments of Turkcell in coming months, once the pandemic effects and this curfew lifted.
Can you just clarify that last bit? You said you expect positive developments in terms of fiber investment, but earlier you were saying that you're restricted from investing in fiber. Can you explain that please?
Türk Telekom had some privileges and some exclusivities for fiber investments. Three years ago it expired. Even Türk Telekom no longer has the exclusivity for fiber rollout. Turkcell has not been granted permits for fiber rollout and fiber infrastructure investments. It is about to change. We are seeking permits to make additional home passes in large cities and especially in large cities where we still have some lacking home pass, even in Istanbul. This is not related to the regulation change with the pandemic. This is another discussion under discussion with the Ministry and other regulatory bodies.
That's understood. Thank you very much.
The next question is from the line of Ibragimova Dilya with Citibank. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks very much for the call and for the opportunity to ask questions. I had a couple, please. First is on consumer finance. Could you please give a bit or explain, you mentioned the consumer finance as a positive, the potential fall down as a positive for the working capital. If the ramp up in the new business slows or gets delayed, that means that you get more of that release, the repayments. You also mentioned it as a risk that the new measures that have been introduced may affect the repayments. The question I had is how does the new measures that have been introduced by the government, and that may affect the repayment or delay in repayments, how does it work? I think most of the consumer finance is also insured.
Is there a way where you can tap into insurance to get the payments on time? The second question is again on your network. As the discussion moves into the popularity of the fiber fixed wireless, how does your mobile network is configured? Could you give a bit more color how many sites are actually connected to fiber? Maybe you can or in cities, whether you can offload the mobile traffic directly into core fiber or, yeah, if you could give a bit more color on that'd be great. Thanks.
Actually, BRSA announced some measures affecting all banking sector, including consumer finance companies. Our loans from Turkcell Consumer Finance, our consumer finance company, are micro loans, and on average, monthly payments are around TRY 200, which is like $30 per month. We are not much affected the change in macroeconomic environment. Of course, this current environment will have more negative consequences on banking sector because the ticket size are significantly higher than our consumer finance operations. So far only less than 500 customers applied for the deferral of their payments. In terms of cash flow, we will not be much affected from these deferral applications. On the other hand, our cost of risk will inevitably be affected from these measures.
Our cost of risk as of the end of last year was around 3%. I expect this rate to increase towards 4%-5% in coming months. Of course, there will be some difficulties from different segments in coming months. It will not delay or postpone the deleveraging of the company due to lower handset sales. On the other hand, more than 90% of the loans that we give from Turkcell consumer finance have been insured. This insurance covers the unemployment cases. In case the unemployment rises in Turkey, which is very likely, we will have a substantial amount of claims from the insurance company, which will limit the increase in cost of risk. On your second question, increasing popularity of our fixed wireless product, Superbox.
Our fixed wireless access Superbox subscribers have already reached 400,000, it has been only one year since we started this product. In less than a year, we reached 400,000. Of course, if the number of subscribers increase further, this will require additional investment on our mobile network. One other factor affecting mobile network quality is the connectivity through fiber. Almost 1/3 of our towers are connected with fiber.
Unfortunately, in Turkey, we cannot increase this further due to restrictions on fiber infrastructures. There is an intention from the government to start 5G in Turkey, if not this year, but in three years' time, potentially we'll see 5G launch in Turkey. Before we are able to start 5G in Turkey, we need to have at least more than 50% of our towers connected with fiber. If this is not the case, we cannot talk about a full-fledged 5G launch in Turkey. I believe in near term, we will see more of our towers will be connected through fiber.
Thanks very much. One follow-up question, unrelated to the first two. On subscriber acquisition costs, is there a scope that subscriber acquisition cost investments will decline this year, potentially with the further positive impact on cash flow?
Definitely
Below EBITDA, like on the balance, more on the cash flow of the analysis.
Definitely, we will see a decline in customer acquisition costs because our acquisitions are down 35% compared to pre-COVID period. Given the fact that we spend around $200 million each year for customer acquisition, we can see a significant slowdown in customer acquisition costs. On the other hand, we have to support our sales channels. We cannot let them go and fail. As we did in 2018, we will be supporting our sales channels so that they can continue their operations, and we can have uninterrupted service in our sales channels. This is not recorded under customer acquisition costs. This goes below EBITDA. Also we are encouraging digital channels. Our sales from digital channels were roughly 8% of our revenues last year. This year it also reached 12%, and we see increasing demand for device sales, accessory sales through our online channels.
Online channel sales per month reached TRY 40 million. It compares to only a couple of million TRY compared to last year. We see increasing traffic in online channels. One other part of our business which will be negatively impacted from this case is prepaid top-ups. Most of our prepaid top-ups were generated through our channels, physical channels. Now we see an increasing shift to our digital operator applications, our customer care application, and also our website, turkcell.com.tr. Paycell, our fintech application has been witnessing increasing traffic for bill payments and also prepaid top-ups. We are investing more and more to encourage digital channel users. We are promoting these channels by giving subscribers free gigabytes, if they use these channels rather than our physical channels. Even excluding this pandemic effect, our customer acquisition costs will gradually decrease in coming years thanks to our digitalization efforts.
The next question is from the line of Alper Ozdemir with Ak Invest. Please go ahead.
Hi. Alper Ozdemir from Ak Invest. How much negative impact should we expect on EBITDA from the free minutes and data packages granted to certain subscriber segments? Thank you.
Actually, we have provided free minutes and data package only to a very limited segment, including healthcare employees, which is in total 500,000 people. They are not all Turkcell subscribers, by the way. It does not create additional burden neither to our network nor to our profitability. Also we have been offering data packages for EBA online education portal. Normally, we were providing 3 GB to each student in this portal. After this pandemic, we have increased this quota to 6 GB . The usage so far has been relatively small, and it will not create any burden on our profitability as well. The EBITDA impact from these free minutes and data packages so far is very minimal to our profitability. In near future, we are not planning to distribute any free minutes data package to wider segments.
Thank you. Also, what's the share of corporate revenues in your total Turkey revenues?
Like 18%.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are no other further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Turkcell management and to Mr. Bilek for any closing comments. Thank you.
Okay. We have a long list of web questions. Unfortunately, we have limited time. We will take couple, and we as IR team, we will be returning answering all of the questions coming from the web afterwards, very shortly. This one is from Pınar Uğuroğlu, TEB Portföy. Is there a change in or will there be a change in churn policy due to unpaid bills? Is there a change planned in CapEx plans?
On churn policy, we are not planning any change in our churn policy. For the second question on collection terms. Actually, the unpaid bills will not be affecting our churn policy. So far, initial signs from collection performance, because we have limited evidence because it's been only one month since this pandemic started. The due date performance has not been affected significantly. Still about 70% of our customers pay on time, but we expect deterioration if this case extends further. This will not create a negative impact on our churn policy. Also for the prepaid lines, for this segment also we are not planning any change.
Okay. Another question comes from Alex from RenCap. Can you discuss the share of SME business in your total revenue?
SME segment is almost 1/2 of our corporate segment, and it makes like 7%-8% of our corporate revenues.
Okay. Maybe last question, Osman, if we may, from Alistair Jones, New Street. Is there any restriction around the ability to increase tariffs? Any restriction on price increases?
There is no restriction on price increases, but under current circumstances, it's not reasonable to increase prices. Rather than price increases, we are encouraging our customers to switch to higher tariffs when we select customers who have potential to breach their quotas. It either reduces churn and also increases our revenues.
Okay, this was our last question.
Very much.
Thank you very much, Osman.
Thank you very much. Stay safe, stay healthy. Have a nice weekend.
Have a nice weekend. Thank you all. Bye-bye. You all. Bye-bye. You all. Bye-bye.