Good afternoon, welcome to Swisscom's full year results presentation. My name is Louis Schmid, head of investor relations. Let's move to slide number two with the agenda for today. Christoph Aeschlimann, our CEO, starts the presentation with chapter one, the 2022 results, where he dives into the key achievements of last year, commercially, operationally, and financially. In chapter two, trends and strategic priorities, our CEO gives a short overview of the trends and an update on the macroeconomic situation in Switzerland and Italy before elaborating on our group strategy and ambitions 25. Christoph continues with chapter three, presenting the 2022 achievements, financials, and the strategy for Swisscom Switzerland before updating on our network and IT activities and priorities for next year.
Dirk Wierzbitzki, head of residential customers, and Urs Lehner, head of B2B customers, of business customers, will present thereafter the achievements 22 and the priorities 23. Alberto Calcagno, CEO of Fastweb, will then talk in chapter four about the industrial and financial performances of our Italian business and its plans going forward. After Alberto's presentation, Eugen Stermetz, our CFO, will present in chapter five in all details the financials 22, including the outlook 23. In the wrap-up, chapter six, some final remarks from our CEO. After the presentation, we will directly move into the Q&A session. With that, I would like to open today's conference and hand over to Christoph. Christoph?
Goals that we pursue since a couple of years. In Switzerland, we were again voted the strongest brand in Switzerland and we also won one of the benchmarks as being the strongest telco brand in the world, which made us extremely proud, as well as winning all or several of the relevant benchmarking tests. In Italy, Alberto will dive into more details later, but we were again able to deliver four quarters of growth in an extremely challenging market, which is from my perspective, an outstanding achievement in Italy. All of these achievements in Switzerland and Italy led to solid financial results overall for the group, which Eugen will present in more details later on.
On the sustainability side, we were able to move ahead and remain the industry leader according to World Finance as the most sustainable telco in the planet. On the product side, we launched many new products, both in Italy but also in Switzerland, B2B and B2C, which Dirk and Urs will talk about later. Also on the network side, we were able to increase our network coverage both in mobile and in wireline and win many tests, as previously mentioned. Overall, the market results are pleasing. We were able to continue our growth story on the mobile postpaid side and increasing our RGUs by 166,000 units. Whereas on the broadband and the TV side, our base was past years at roughly 100,000 RGUs per year, and we also expect this decline to continue this year, moving forward.
On the wholesale side, we had minor losses after the Sunrise including some of the Sunrise optimizations and migrations, but we are now again in a stable situation on the wholesale business side. In the Italian business, we were able to maintain our growth engines and increase our mobile subscriber base by 25%, winning over 600,000 new customers in the mobile B2C space. If you look at the wireline market, we continue to pursue our value strategy on the B2C side, losing some RGUs in broadband, but largely overcompensating them by an increased wholesale coverage and new wholesale contracts, where we serve all the new market entrants in the Italian market, which allows us to compensate the losses we have on the private side. Alberto will detail this a bit more later on.
Overall, we can say, a good performance in a challenging market environment, both in Italy and Switzerland, and we are very pleased with those results. Overall, on the financial side, we were able to post CHF 1.1 billion revenue. On an underlying basis, this is increased by 1%. Also on the EBITDA side, we were able to write a profit of CHF 4.4 billion, which if you compare it on a like-for-like basis, without all the exceptionals we had in 2021 and 2022, corresponds to a 3.1% year-on-year increase over the last year. On the right-hand side, you can see how we managed or how the EBITDA is composed.
Overall, the underlying EBITDA increased by CHF 139 million, most of it coming out of Swisscom Switzerland. Also, Fastweb delivered its EBITDA growth with contributing CHF 30 million to the overall EBITDA result. At the bottom, you can see the CHF 211 million exceptionals linked to provisions and other effects that Eugen will explain later on in his presentation, bringing us to CHF 4.4 billion EBITDA in 2022. If we look a bit forward in trends and strategic priorities for Swisscom. On the trends side, I would say the trends are largely still the same as last year. On the technology side, the most important trends for Swisscom are related to cloud, AI, and cybersecurity.
We also have emerging trends such as Web 3.0 or the metaverse, where we are doing first experiments to see how we can enter those new markets and provide new products for our customers. Talking about customers, we can say that the trends are also largely the same. They have higher and higher expectations, more reliable, more secure, more instant, and more digital. We have many initiatives on the way, especially in digitizing our interfaces towards the customer interaction to make these to match the expectations of our customers. On the stakeholder side, I think we can say especially in Switzerland, ESG is taking more and more relevance or importance in the market. On the customer side, our customers expect us to behave in a certain way and contribute positively and sustainably to our environment.
The war of talent is something which is an important aspect of the company. As you know, in many markets, there is a talent shortage, especially on the IT side, and we are deploying many efforts to counter this shortage. We are increasing or accelerating our education, upskilling our own employees, but also training new market or new employees with our internal training facilities. We also invest a lot in the branding activities around our Swisscom brand to attract and retain more employees at Swisscom. In terms of economic environment in Switzerland, the country is fairly robust. We have a limited inflation in Switzerland running slightly below 3%. We have a stable economy, and I would say we have unchanged dynamics in the telecom market.
Most of the market is not growing or declining with the exception of mobile, which is still slightly growing. You can see that the price battles and promotion battles have increased again into Q3 and Q4, where we have seen very aggressive and sustained promotion from our competitors, and we expect this to continue in 2023. The regulatory environment is also increasingly challenging, this is also reflected in one of the provisions that we have made last year in our overall reevaluation of regulatory risks, which Eugen will explain later on. What is positive in Switzerland, but also in Italy, is the IT market, which is growing substantially in many different segments, and it is also a still a very fragmented market which offers opportunity for consolidation for Swisscom.
If we look at Italy, the situation is slightly different. We have a country with a declining population versus a growing population in Switzerland with a much higher inflation. We have a sort of a, let's say a more challenging macro environment. You can also see the effects of this challenging macro environment in the behavior of all the market participants. Where we all know that the market is extremely competitive, and we are facing many new entrants, which despite having already a very competitive market, are entering the market and try to win market share in the wireline market and resell or cross-sell broadband subscriptions to their existing customer base.
We expect this to continue this year on the telecom side. Also in Italy, we are focused on IT, and we are continuing to expand our footprint because the market in Italy is still very fragmented, and it offers a lot of possibilities for Fastweb to increase its current business. Overall, we can say that Swisscom as a group is very well positioned today. We are in a excellent shape for the future, both in Switzerland and in Italy. We are doing the best to extract the maximum value on the telecom side and invest heavily on the IT side to grow in line with the market in this very important market for the future. Overall, our 2025 strategy and ambition is unchanged which is unchanged compared to before.
This is a strategy we decided over two years ago, and we continue to remain completely focused on executing this strategy. We are defending our market position in Switzerland to remain the market leader in Switzerland. Being also investing heavily in the, in the networks in Switzerland. We remain the leading challenger in Italy or basically the only challenger which is growing and growing on the top line and increasing its profitability. We want to continue this growth in the coming years until 2025. If we manage to do this will lead us to excellent profitability and rock-solid financials. As I already mentioned before, we will continue to execute on our corporate responsibility side and continue to create new innovative products and increasing the reliability on our services.
We will now in the go into more details in these five different domains later on. Before we move to Italy and to Switzerland, I will quickly talk about corporate responsibility and innovation and reliability to highlight some of the achievements of this year. On the corporate responsibility side, our strategy is based on three pillars. We are focusing on the environment, on the people, and on good corporate governance. On the governance side, it is quite simple. We have been voted again as the best board of directors out of 171 companies in Switzerland, which is extremely pleasing. We are continuing to invest in the governance of the company to ensure that the company is well run and ethic business behavior is in place everywhere.
On the people side, we are heavily investing on educating our own employees, but also our customers. We have a digital academy in Italy. We have an academy in Switzerland to continue to train the citizens in the media usage and to profit of the digitalization, or the chances of digitalization. On the environment side, most of the focus is invested into decreasing our use of energy and decreasing our creation of CO2, where we are focused on all four scopes, helping our customers saving CO2, but also decreasing CO2 in our supply chain and in our own operations. On the innovation side, we have seven, sorry, seven different cluster or focus areas where we are investing in.
I will not go through all of the seven areas to probably be way too boring, but just to highlight a bit or to make you aware in which areas we are actually concentrating on, because these areas are the basis of our business, being the network, AI analytics, but also the entertainment side, especially in Switzerland with a big entertainment business. Also I think the cybersecurity area is increasingly important for our customers, both on the B2C side, but also on the B2B side. We continue to invest heavily in these areas to take advantage also of future opportunities where network and security continues to merge more and more together, which is for us, a very interesting avenue to create future growth. Moving to Switzerland.
Swisscom Switzerland has achieved many things in the last year. Urs and Dirk will highlight them in more detail, but maybe from my side, just one word about the IT aspect. We have clarified the FTTH rollout strategy in last October, where we announced that we will move to a point-to-point construction model versus previously point-to-multipoint. We will continue to execute this strategy and actually the change is on track as well as all the other IT consolidation projects which are ongoing. On the B2C side, I would highlight the launch of the Blue product portfolio, which is actually the launch after three years. A major product launch, which is always a big undertaking, and I think the B2C organization executed it marvelously well. The customers love the product.
We have a very good market uptake, and Dirk will explain in a bit more detail the what we are doing on this side. On this side, it was also one of the reasons which helped us to stabilize for the first time in seven years the service revenue evolution in Switzerland, where we had a flat service revenue on the B2C side in Switzerland in 2022. On the B2B side, we managed to slow down the service revenue erosion on the telco side, and the IT side actually grew by 6.3%, which is a very good achievement in the IT market and managed or led to an overall growth on the B2B side as well.
In Switzerland, the financial results are CHF 8.27 billion net revenue, which is up CHF 37 million compared to 2021. Also on the EBITDA side, we have an increase of CHF 30 million leading to CHF 3.483 billion Swiss francs, which is an increase despite all the provisions that we had to do due to the regulatory actions, which is very pleasing. The strategy on the other side in Switzerland is also unchanged compared to last year. It resides on three pillars. The first one is delivering the best customer experience. This has two aspects.
One is based on delivering the best products for our customers. The other one is based on the best service in all the touch points, being at the shops, the call center, also the digital interaction with our app for customers. We were able to generate or increase our NPS lead on this side, which demonstrate that the actions we have in place and the strategy we pursue is working, and we can increase the distance towards our competitors. On the operational excellence side, this is focusing on two different aspects as well. The first one is increasing quality of services, quality of network, quality of products. The second aspect is delivering a lower cost base, so decreasing our cost.
Most of the initiatives in this bucket are based on simplification, automation, or introducing AI, which at the end makes the products and the services faster, better, and cheaper at the same time. On the new growth side, we also want to continue our growth in Switzerland. We want to maximize the telecom business we have. This is a with various strategies on the B2B or B2C side with a multi-brand approach. We at the same time want to grow on the IT side, as mentioned before, with a special focus on cloud, cybersecurity, AI, but also application business, delivering in SAP or other areas where we still believe there, the market is growing and offers up interesting opportunities for Swisscom.
I will now move to the networks and IT piece in Switzerland, giving you some insights on our strategy for networks and IT. In the technical area, we are working on five different pillars. As mentioned before, we changed and clarified the rollout strategy for FTTH, and we are now implementing full speed this change to switch the whole construction model to point to point. We are advancing at full speed and as expected, and we're able also to increase the UBB, the broadband coverage at all levels, and win all the relevant benchmarks, both in mobile but also in wireline, which is extremely pleasing result for the team. On the mobile side, we were able to really keep our lead.
We have on the quality side, but also in the coverage side and increase the population coverage substantially. I will come to this later on in a more detailed slide. Another important action on the IT side is the consolidation and simplification of our landscape, as historically, we have built up quite a complex IT architecture. I will talk a bit about this later on to show you where we stand on the simplification initiatives, which will also deliver or contribute in an important way to the future cost savings of the company. Reliability, I will come to later as well, where we were able to increase our stability substantially. The priorities 2023 actually remain the same as the priorities 2022. We want to continue the rollout in mobile.
We will continue the rollout on wireline, continue to invest in securing or making the network and services more reliable and secure. Also going back into a growth model on the wholesale side to secure really the contribution of wholesale to the value creation of Swisscom. If we go a bit into details on these five different pillars I talked about before. The first one is the wireline area, where you can see that we actually were able to increase the broadband or ultra-broadband coverage by 3%, moving, covering now 91% of the country with over 80 Mb, which is the new universal obligation speed in Switzerland, starting 2024. We were also able to increase the footprint on the fiber rollout side.
Maybe I would take some time now on the fiber side because there are quite a lot of numbers on this slide. We have to distinguish on the fiber side between constructed and marketable footprint because some of the footprint we have built are still in the multipoint topology, which is today blocked by the Comco. We are standing end of 2022, we actually constructed a footprint corresponding to 43% of the country. Marketable is 34%. The difference is the multipoint topology. For 2025, we actually plan to reach between 55%-60% constructed and between 50%-55% marketable as announced in October last year. This is in line with our October announcement.
What is also interesting to note is that we have roughly 10% fiber footprint in Switzerland which exists outside of the Swisscom footprint, which was built by third-party companies. This means that if Swisscom achieves, and we plan to execute and achieve our targets of 55%-60% constructed footprint, Switzerland will have approximately two-thirds of the country covered with FTTH footprint in 2025, so in three years. Most of the interesting areas will actually be completely built in 2025, which is, I think, an excellent news for the future. What we will also do this year is written on the bottom right. We will start testing copper phase out as we start to investigate this topic, how we can, in the most effective way, reduce the copper coverage in Switzerland.
We will do first the Municipalities this year to test the best way of migrating and collaborating also with the authorities to decide on the future of the copper phase-out strategy related to the ongoing fiber construction. On the mobile side, we were able to increase the mobile coverage by 12%, and we now cover roughly three-quarters of the population with 5G+ , so the new 3.5 gigahertz 5G frequencies, which is a substantial increase compared to last year. We will continue to build out new towers to increase the 5G Plus coverage also this year.
Our goal is to reach at least 90% 5G+ coverage in the coming years. We will keep our CapEx envelope of about CHF 300 million stable on the mobile side to continue to upgrade and densify our network. The goal being to create extra capacity in the network and also extend our coverage leadership, which is already today about two times ahead of competition. On the IT and network simplification side, which is a very important topic and quite close to my heart. When I became CTIO four years ago, we decided on a radical simplification program. We are continuing to execute on these goals in the coming years, also with the new CTIO joining us in the next two weeks.
It is the basis for a lean, simple, and automated operations in the future, which will allow us to operate our network in a higher quality, more reliable, and lower cost base. Also deploying in the future new products in a much faster manner. You can see where we stand. We were able, in the last three years, to remove a quarter of all our network platforms. Some of these projects are, let's say, executable in a couple of months, probably half a year. Some of them take four or five years, like the 2G phase-out, which we completed a couple of quarters ago. It just shows you that some of these projects are very heavy lifting, involving a lot of people and a lot of resources.
Our ambition is to reach nearly two-thirds less network platforms in 2025, and we are well on the way to execute this target. On the IT side, we also continue to remove IT applications in a continual phases. We actually decreased the number of IT applications we are operating by 15%, and we are continuing to remove IT applications every year and reaching the 25%. On this side, we are slightly ahead of our plan. We might be able to even decrease IT applications further than the initial set target in 2025. On the supplier reduction side, we are well ahead of our plan. Already reduced 70% of our supplier base compared to 2019.
We continue to reduce our supplier base to simplify contract management, interaction with supplier, decrease cost, and simplify the overall landscape. This, in summary, is an important pillar contributing to the reliability and security of our services. We were able to improve the reliability by around 40% last year compared to the year before, and we are continuing to heavily invest in this area to further reduce the number of incidents we have on our network. We have a stability program in place with very ambitious targets until 2025 because I am convinced that the stability of our services creates the trust in the brand and the reason, or is a big reason why customers also stay with Swisscom. Therefore, it is important that we continue to execute on this topic.
I think on the B2B side, a customer which is happy with the stability of services delivered is much more inclined to renew his contract, and it is much easier to sell new services to a happy customer. This is a key pillar of the technology department contributing to the success of B2C and B2B. Last but not least, we also want to ensure the best monetization of our network investments. As I previously outlined, we are investing a lot of money in the fiber roll-outs, and we want to ensure that it is best used. This is the role of our wholesale division, where most of our competitors in Switzerland are customer of Swisscom Wholesale, buying wireline services from from our wholesale branch.
We, I think, have a quite a stable evolution on this side. We had a minor loss of revenues last year because of the MVNO effects of the UPC merger, which was still visible in the first half year, 2022. This year, this effect will not be there anymore. The goal is to, let's say, try to increase the wholesale activities again this year to make a meaningful contribution to the network utilization. This was it from the network side, and I will now hand over to Dirk Wierzbitzki for the B2C side.
All right. Thank you very much, Christoph. A lot has been said already. B2C has had a good year in 2022, particularly around the stabilization of the revenues. I would like to expand a little bit into it. We'll be see as the drivers for that achievement. I think, you know, one key aspect is certainly that, you know, we have played our multi-brand strategy, I would like to talk about the Swisscom brand first and then about the second and third brands. On the Swisscom brand, from my perspective, you know, we clearly doubled down on delivering our customer promise, and that means the customer promise in all aspects.
Christoph already talked about the quality of the network has never been as great as it has been now, and that is clearly perceived by the market and by the customers. Nobody else offers more performing and stable network than we do, and it clearly pays off. Similarly, that is true also for the touchpoint service, be it digital or be it assisted, that people and customers are experiencing. Similarly also for our offers and for products and other experiences that they are using. That as a package then is recognized also by the external world. I believe there's hardly any price that we have not obtained last year, regardless for service, networks or products, and for the brand as such, by the way, the strongest telco brand in the world.
That then in turn, obviously, leads to a very satisfied customer base. We are, by a huge and far distance, the NPS leader in Switzerland. Quality play does pay off. Then in terms of numbers, it clearly shows itself and again, in a record low churn that we have seen last year. The other aspect I would like to highlight on is, you know, we focus quite substantial efforts on the ARPU management and value play. One thing that you might have noticed, for instance, that we substantially have been reduced, you know, our promotions in terms of duration. We went from 12 to six months, but also in terms of the height of the discount, which were like half prices eventually.
Now, you know, you get between, let's say 15%-20% of a discount. Both effects then basically provided, you know, for a good ARPU result also. Also, you know, the additions performance has not suffered, you know, from reduction of promotional activity. Again, the explanation for that is the Swisscom brand and all that it delivers has never been as strong as, you know, last year. Then certainly, to the right-hand side, Christoph touched also upon that briefly already. We have launched an entirely new mass market proposition. I would dare to say a world's first. It's kind of like a mass market digital-first product that also actually makes service a tiering dimension in the portfolio scheme as such.
For those customers, you know, that opt in and prefer to, you know, interact with us in a digital-first way, you know, they also get, you know, a certain pricing advantage. Not only is that obviously the entire way, we rethought the presentation of telco services in terms of simplicity, and in terms of versatility, is entirely new and totally new setup. By the way, also here, we managed that, you know, quite a big part of the customer base, got substantial improvements on the performances in, for instance, in connectivity. I think it's like these three things, I will expand a little bit further later on on that.
There's the second and third brand play, where most particularly, Wingo, our second brand, has stood out. I think it has been particularly standing out because of, you know, great offers, but also great execution of marketing and communication. You know, some channel expansion that overall yielded, particularly in the mobile domain, very positive results for us. Lastly, in terms of margin contribution, as you see on the right-hand side, the quality play and the shift to digital is paying off also there. We had substantial decrease in the customer care. Where there is no problem, there is no reason for anybody to call in. When there's, you know, good digital possibilities, you know, people prefer these.
Contrary to what might some people think, already more than 50% of customers appreciate the digital interaction with that. Not the least, the pandemic time has even accelerated that a little bit. Particularly the new customers that come into the market, they are digital first, and they don't look at digital as a burden. They see it as a preferred choice for us, for them to interact with us. All of this has worked from our perspective that well, that in 2023, there's a very simple strategy. We just continue what we have been doing in 2022 and pursue the trajectories, you know, as I laid them out. You'll see the five big categories here.
Obviously, we continue our value play in defending ARPUs, by further looking at, you know, our promotional behavior and pricing matters. We want to maintain a strong market position, obviously still expanding on the newly launched Blue offer. There's still a couple of things that we have in mind that we will bring to market. Again, in terms of, you know, for the price sensitive segments, you know, continue to make our way with the second brand Wingo. Obviously, churn prevention remains high on the agenda, by continuing our play on quality and brand and all the things that I have been mentioning.
Grow revenues is not only a topic then for core connectivity, but we also see pockets of growth, for instance, in entertainment and certain value added services and in the accessories business and so on. Lastly, of course, the shift to digital is in full swing. We are particularly well underway for the shift to digital in care. We are well underway for the shift to digital in digital sales for the second and third brands. We still see an opportunity to beef matters up on the Swisscom brand, you know, in that respect. When we look into the particular categories here, as mentioned, you know, in 2022, we have substantially cut down on promotional activities.
We will explore, you know, further measures that we might to explore on that path. Clearly, promotional activity is still intense in the Swiss market, yeah. Nonetheless, let's say we are performing well, so we don't see any reason, you know, to become more aggressive again. Actually, to the contrary, as I said, we see, you know, how can we further maybe lower promotional activity also in 2023. For pricing, as said, we already have executed some, as we call it, targeted pricing in 2022. We see certain pockets of opportunity also in 2023, particularly if you look, for instance, as the customer base in the back book, if you wish.
You know, there are certain older tariffs, you know, where we will develop customers into the newer tariffs, and by that also hoping, you know, to gain a positive ARPU momentum, as we do this phase out of the shifts actually to front book tariffs. Obviously, we're going to continue Wingo in the second brand space then. When it comes to the Blue in the next year, as said earlier on, we launched an entirely new proposition. There's still, you know, elements that can be, you know, exploited further and rounded out further. Clearly on the dimension, for instance, of entertainment, and other solutions, you know, we will enrich the portfolio.
We will also enrich the possibilities of the digital self-service with the chatbot that we have launched and so on. We see some good opportunity also, you know, to exploit FTTH again. You know, after all the things that have been happening that you are also aware of, we are happy and look forward that we, you know, can recommence to sell FTTH. We see some potential there also again, be it in the base, but also be it, you know, to gain new broadband customers as we are now servicing them. Then obviously, as said earlier on, we are all going to continue the Wingo play and enrich that offering too.
Here on that chart, I would really like to draw your attention on the graphic that we have put in there for the NPS development. Of course, you might wanna take it with a grain of salt. I mean, that is our measurement with our customers, but also with customers, you know, from competitors. As you can see, the last couple of years, the NPS gap has been, you know, substantially widened up. I will almost dare to say we are playing in a different league now, if not two leagues above, you know, the competition. I think the reason for that is all that, you know, I explained about the focus on quality, on customer experience, offers, and so on and so forth.
That is then clearly paying off also in very low churn rates as you see them at the bottom of the chart here. Obviously, you know, the strategy as said, you know, we continue the route that we have embarked upon in 2022. Also for 2023, we wanna continue with our activities in loyalty and retention management, which we have substantially beefed up and also gained some real, let's say, operational sophistication and professionalism that we are going to continue our brand and experience play, and so on and so forth. There's pockets of growth in entertainment. So next to, like, core connectivity business, there's pockets of growth in core entertainment.
You see some index numbers here around, for instance, the sports, users, the sport customers, which has been very nicely growing the last couple of years. Here also we want to continue, you know, onwards on that trajectory.
We are also obviously beefing up our entertainment proposition with new possibilities and functionality and obviously also, you know, content, some of which that we provide, but also many opportunities that we see by reselling, you know, content and also other applications from others, as we want to, you know, increasingly try to leverage, let's say, the trusted customer relationship with not only serving telco services but also content services and maybe even, you know, services beyond that. To finish up, obviously, as I said, the shift to digital is in full swing. We wanna continue, you know, on that path. We are well underway on, you know, in care, in the shift to care. We managed down workloads quite substantially.
Christoph mentioned, you know, the deployment of AI, which we already do. I guess you all have seen that, you know, AI is making tremendous advancements, you know, in these days. That is certainly something that we believe we can likewise profit from for us, but equally also, you know, deploy or provide a profit then for our customers with it. In terms of assisted channel, we are halfway in the rollout of our totally new shop concept, which also deploys lots of digital opportunities in the shop, which, you know, again, provides for better sales and better service opportunities, but also higher degrees of efficiencies that we are looking for.
Similarly, also, we want to more and more, you know, personalize and digitize and automate the entire digital customer life cycle management, so to say, from the first day you are a customer, until. Well, hopefully you never leave, but let's just throughout the entire customer life cycle. The particular focus, you know, in the coming year, we want to, you know, put on the e-sales channel share for the own branch. Well, that's the briefing for 2023 for B2C segment. I hand over to Urs for the B2B segment.
Thanks a lot, Dirk. Also welcome from my side. Happy to share some additional insights to all this which was already explained by Christoph concerning our B2B business in Switzerland. Our core achievements in 2022, we definitely can build on strong results commercially and operationally. Some highlights I'd like to explain first, starting with the telecommunications business where we definitely have exceeded our own expectations. I guess our quality approach really starts to pay off. Not bidding for every price in a very demanding and market also in 2022. I guess we definitely could, let's say reduce our revenue erosion above, let's say our own expectations. We are trying to continue also working on that way forward.
I definitely see still a very demanding and, let's say, a challenging market environment in telco B2B space where our opponents, pretty often in a one-off approach, drop prices in a way which from our perspective point of view sometimes are definitely not reasonable at all. Having said that, we definitely work on our quality strategy and execute on it way further. We launched in Q4 our 5G FWA solution with, very promising first results. We definitely are also, working strongly in leading the software-defined technology business or technology approach in our, telco offering also in the SME market and also in the corporate space way forward.
As was elaborated by Christoph, we had a strong growth in our IT business outperforming on the top line let's say the revenue erosion on the telco side which led to an overall growth in B2B business 2022. We could definitely expand on one side on our core elements around cloud, around security, but also had a very nice growth in our software business driven by SAP and other elements where we are working on. And also the positive trend in profitability evolution goes into the right direction, but still a lot of challenges and work ongoing there.
Our growth in the security space, we doubled, for example, in the threat detection response area, our revenue for the second time in a row on a year-on-year basis, and fended off also some large cyberattacks which, let's say, went through our networks where we really could play an important role for our economy and our customers here in Switzerland. Last but not least, we were executing strong in digitizing our customer interactions. On the corporate space, we have fully closed our migration towards a new self-service portal for our corporate customers.
In the SME space, this migration and transformation is half on the way, which will lead us to, for sure, a better, let's say, execution and more efficiency also way forward and also more self-service capability, especially in the SME space, where from a historic perspective point of view, we definitely have still some work to do. As already laid out by Dirk in the B2C space, also I come back to that later in a minute. Our NPS result is really very promising and we are working hard to make sure that, let's say, it's easy to make business with us, as Swisscom the B2B space here in Switzerland. Our priorities 2023. First of all, further on pushing our telco value differentiation.
We will enter into the market with some additional elements, especially in the SME segment where we have a pretty old portfolio actually in place. There is definitely more to come within 2023. We will further expand our position in the Swiss IT services market in the corporate domain, but also strongly in the SME space. For sure, we will act further on to deliver seamless customer experiences and work in our priorities to make sure that our strategy is executed in a relentless manner. If you're digging a little bit further into telco business, as laid out, I guess, we improved operationally. We have maximized, let's say, our approach in working on differentiation. We started with new products, with new services, as laid out.
For example, in the IoT business, we made steps forward into a direction to be able to provide integrated solutions, not only based on connectivity, also added with business solution, including applications analytics, where we definitely have very solid results. On the ARPU basis, year, which is laid out in the middle, you definitely can see that beside the fixed voice, we were very stiff and still had some losses in the ARPU base. We were very stable on the year-to-year basis. Our blended ARPU is still under pressure, as mentioned before. Let's say, we had a certain decline in price erosion, but price erosion in the B2B space is still ongoing. I don't see, let's say, a huge potential there. I believe we're also looking forward into 2023.
We have to, let's say, have a look on it, but we are pretty sure that, let's say the pressure will remain. I don't see a fundamental trend change there, but we are working the best we can on that. Last but not least, in the IoT space, we have after Corona, seen a pretty nice, let's say, ramp-up in implementing solutions. A lot of rollouts which were stopped over the last two years have started to take off, which helped us also to grow the ARPU basis in the IoT business. If we have a deeper look into our IT activities within the market here in Switzerland, where we see a CAGR also way forward of somehow 5% per year.
We definitely have the ambition to grow at least the market level or above, which we delivered in 2022. I guess we have our portfolio, our unique differentiation, that we are really able to be the one-stop shop for B2B customers here in Switzerland. We execute on that, try to reduce complexity, make it more simple. As also laid out by Christoph, the profound foundation and stability in our existing services, where we had for sure made a lot of advancements in 2022, but there are still a lot of work has to be done on as in a joint effort within Swisscom Switzerland to make our ambition 2025 real, that we don't have to talk about stability anymore concerning services here of Swisscom.
If you look to the quarterly evolution in our IT business, we definitely can say on a year-over-year basis, we had a solid trend in every quarter. For sure, depending somehow in quarter basis also from certain large project situations, but fundamentally spoken, we believe we definitely have to leave it well also on the... We will continue to work on that trajectory way forward in 2023. We have integrated very successfully over the last year, some organic moves last year, in the SME space with MTF, which delivered a great first year under our umbrella. Where we are working on also to push the IT business in the overall percentage of our business in the SME space.
We did a very solid, let's say, ramp-up, which will evolve over the next year. Coming to some elements of our value, let's say, security and hybrid ICT product. We truly see that there is a huge transformation ongoing. Every customer, every B2B customer in his own speed and his own strategy, how he comes out of his data centers into either a full public cloud world or normally into hybrid situations where we definitely have all the capabilities in-house to support our customer in their digital transformation. We are by far the largest Microsoft Azure partner, Azure Expert partner here. Have won also a lot of exclusive partner status there. We are very strong together with AWS as a partner here in Switzerland.
We are working on this transformation to be the integral partner on the infrastructure security, but also application transformation side for our Swiss-based headquarter customers here in Switzerland. This will remain our focus way forward also in 2023. Advancing in the unified communication collaborate space, we will bring new cloud-based services in the workplace environment, which is for sure, very let's say, very asked need for our customers. We will advance to make it easier to work as an integrated partner for our B2B customers. For us, also, and that we are really also proud of, that we can see over the last years, we have, let's say ramped up our already very solid NPS level to next heights.
It's, first of all, in the corporate space, but also in the SME space. Let's say the trend is our friend there, and we are working, let's say, also to write the story way forward because we truly believe differentiation comes from customer satisfaction. When it comes to the easy to business that they can decide either they want to, let's say, do changes wherever it's possible on their own, on their timing, or, hand it over to us as a partner.
This flexibility is a part of our One B2B transformation on the telco side, which also will deliver in 2023 new elements of our portfolio, starting in the mobile space in the first half of this year. Yes, we are maintaining and on the way to reduce complexity to get rid of a lot of the legacy applications and also products. Phase out is a very important function we are working on, but also we will deliver new additional services on the foundation that we have built on over the last two to three years. I'm pretty solid that there is a set of opportunity in a market where we are really able to deliver a broad variety of services to our B2B customers in Switzerland.
Closing with the remark, I'm convinced that at least in the telco space, it will also in 2023 be more risky than opportunity business. Handing over to my colleague from Milano, to Alberto. Okay. Thank you.
Okay. Thanks, Urs. A warm welcome also from my side. Let's cross the border and go to Italy. Okay. On the main achievement 2022, yes, we did it again. We reached the 38th consecutive quarter of growth. This based basically on several, let's say, things. You know, the main message is that the growth comes from each market we address. Clearly, such result is underpinned by a strong commercial and customer result. We grew as a whole by 700K, even if, you know, the vast majority will come as come, sorry, from the mobile, but also the wholesale we see as being a terrific contributor. Clearly, you know, this help our positive financial performance.
If you ask about the recipe, clearly is the, I would say the all investment that we keep going and we keep doing in our infrastructure. Actually, following a well-consolidated Swisscom tradition, we have been also, let's say, awarded with the best wireline, best FTTH, for 2020 network for 2022, and also, the best mobile network for the second half of 2022. Clearly, you know, to have the most reliable and also dense infrastructure is extremely important. As I was saying, we have been performing consistently in all the market, also in the consumer, where we have, let's say, two strategy.
If you look, the fixed line, basically here the goal is to stabilize ARPU, not to follow any price war, to really go for value, and that what we are successfully achieving on the market. We are pushing clearly on ultra mobile penetration because we want to leverage on the superior quality of our network. Clearly, on the other side, the second strategy on mobile is to be extremely aggressive as we are leading the monthly net adds since a long time now. Basically for in the year we were able to achieve more than say 600,000 new customers as an evidence of our success in the market. If we go to enterprise, also here we have a very well consolidated reputation.
All the EU funds specifically related to school and to the health system have started. Also, we launched the 5G mobile. For us, the 5G mobile in this market represent a unique growth opportunity. You know, we just started, but we have already the first response from the market and, you know, the response is very, very satisfying for us and for the customers. Clearly, we are also now paving our, let's say, path to become leader in the cloud space and in the cybersecurity space. We have done some acquisition. We have done some important partnership with major hyperscaler.
Also here we really want to be, you know, and to strengthen our already consolidated position as one stop shop for big enterprises. Also the wholesale market for us represents, as I said, a very good contributor to growth. We have been growing revenues double digit. We have been growing our customer base significantly, and we have a very strong pipeline also for, you know, 2023. In terms of sustainability, we have been announcing our new purpose that is basically Tu Si Futuro, which means that as a company, we feel a strong responsibility for the digitalization of the society, not only by delivering the best infrastructure, but also by delivering the best digital training.
We have launched not only or we have strengthened not only our Fastweb Digital Academy, but also, we open our STEP, our, let's say, gate or museum of the future, where basically we train and we offer, for the tailor-made, let's say, digital, courses to, all Italian population. Clearly, you know, environment is extremely important, for us. In terms of, zero CO2 emission, we have already achieved, significant, results as this is, really clearly, embedded in our overall strategy. If we move to financial result, we start with the net revenues. The Q4 was extremely strong. The good news is that, as we were saying, the growth comes from, all the market. Specifically it was a very good, quarter because of wholesale performances, but also, enterprise.
If I look at the year, we almost reach CHF 2.5 billion revenues, also here the growth was coming from wholesale enterprise, also consumer with, I would say mixed feelings because, yeah, on the fixed-line, let's say we are kind of flattish while mobile is growing. If it comes to EBITDA, the last quarter was clearly almost EUR 230 million, +1% because of different mix. The mix of revenues is different in Q4, was more revenues at lower margins. I would say also that Q4 has been impacted by seasonality effect and also from the energy bill that has been particularly severe during this Q4.
If I look at the full year performances, almost CHF 850 million EBITDA, so representing an absolute growth of roughly CHF 30 million or more than, roughly, 3.4% in percentage. Operating free cash flow, I would say, you know, growing and free cash flow almost reaching CHF 200 million. Our relationship, CapEx to sales, stable at 25% as we really want to continue to accelerate on our investment. Just, you know, a quick history to remember our performance, also relative performance versus the market in the last almost it's almost 10 years that we are growing.
If you look at overall customers, we've done a significant growth because basically we more almost triple our customer base while the market is actually decreasing. If we look at our revenues, basically we grew almost by 50% while the market went down by 25%. If you look to EBITDA, we were able to add 70%, almost CHF 300 million, where the market has lost almost 40%. I think this is a unique, I would say, performance, not only vis-à-vis Italy, but also vis-à-vis Europe. The reason for that is because of our sound strategy, because in terms of growth, we want to achieve a profitable growth. Clearly we have several engines that contributes to our growth.
Surely we want to scale up on our 5G mobile market because we are already very strong in the consumer space. Also there is a very strong opportunity in the enterprise. In the enterprise, there is also the opportunity of cloud and security, where we are already today, you know, a very clear leader in the Italian market, but we can actually become even stronger in the, in the vis-à-vis the clients, and then we can monetize our superior infrastructure by leveraging on the wholesale opportunity. Clearly, this strategy relies on a superior network. We want to continue to roll out our gigabit or ultra broadband footprint.
We want to continue in our path to becoming really an infrastructure over the top, which means that, you know, we have already abandoned the, let's say, old telco, traditional telco model, but we are becoming more an ICT type of company, where infrastructure is important, but also service platform and code is even more important. We can really have an end-to-end control over our services. That's why we want to actually to position ourselves not as a price leader, but as a quality and innovation leaders. We want also to have a distinctive position by trying to be the best in class in terms of reputation. Clearly, this strong commitment to digitalize, you know, the Italian population for us is part of our core strategy.
The environmental attention is very clear. We want to become carbon neutral by 2025, exactly aligning ourselves to Swisscom, we want to be clearly a role model also for inclusion in Italy. In terms of priorities, we just need, you know, to continue to roll out as much as possible, to, you know, expand and strengthen every quarter, our network. Doesn't matter if it comes to fiber, FWA or 5G. We need, as we did actually also in 2022, to manage the macroeconomic scenario. As Christoph was anticipating at the beginning of the presentation, Italy is facing very, very high inflation, I think that we have been able to manage it correctly in 2022, we'll do the same also in 2023.
When it comes to markets, clearly for us on consumer, we want to on the mobile side, to continue to accelerate on our growth, while on our wireline, we want to go for value. For enterprise, we need to leverage our, you know, mobile entry and then to strengthen our position in cloud and in the cybersecurity. In terms of wholesale, you know, it just a matter to continue increase our ultra broadband customer base. We have a strong and important pipeline of new entrants that has chosen Fastweb as main supplier. I think that the pipeline is very strong, and we have just to deliver.
Last but not least, on ESG, we'll see in a second, but we really want to continue to distinguish ourself from the others. We have become a benefit company, and we want really to push hard also on this target. When it comes to infrastructure, as you can see, our ambition is very spread because we want to continue expand our fiber network. We have done it in 2022, and we will continue to doing it also in 2023. In the 5G FWA, we have been basically at the end of 2023, we will be almost 3.5x , almost 4x , the network that we had in 2021.
5G FWA for us is extremely important in gray and in white areas, where clearly fiber is the best technology for the black areas. There is the 5G mobile, which is, I would say, it's an umbrella technology that let's say brings ultra broadband everywhere. Also here at the end of 2022, we are very well positioned in Italy as the widest 5G mobile network, we want to develop it further and to reach 75% by the end of 2023.
If it comes to the, let's say, the management of the macro, macroeconomic headwinds, for us, basically we had two kind of issues, not only just personal, just Fastweb, sorry, issue, but they were, I would say, counter issues. One is related with the energy cost. As you can see, energy cost have been an issue, particularly in Q4, but I would say that has been impacting negatively our PNL all across the quarters. Here, we have done, you know, a very strong revision of our consumption. In our consumption, basically the major contributor to the electricity bill are the wireline network and the data center.
Here we have developed, you know, consumption, a new project that aim at reduce consumption by 20%, and all the project are overall on track. Also, I think in terms of inflation, we have been clearly very, very cautious. We've been revising our cost structure significantly, and as we said, it was not impacting the overall growth per quarter and also for the full year. For consumer, I would say that for the wireline, here, we want to actually go for value. We did not enter in the price war that started back at the beginning of 2022.
Actually also here we see that, you know, the market is becoming a bit more rational, nevertheless, you know, we have been always counting just on our strategy. We want to extend our fixed offering with value-added services. We are pushing our WLAN extender, which helps us also to have a very strong coverage indoor. We are pushing our loyalty programs. We are also launching ancillary services like the home insurance. I think that, you know, all the results, all the KPIs shows that, you know, the more you push towards ultra broadband and quality services, the more you know, your services are innovative, the more you have an ARPU uplift, a reduction of churn.
That's, you know, we are gonna continue such a strategy and execute such strategy also in 2023. In terms of mobile, we want to continue to grow. Actually, in October and November, we have been the best performer in terms of mobile number portability. Our ambition is to become the best performer also for a quarter or maybe also for the full year. I think we now have the most extended 5G network, where we have the best network as also, you know, the award of Ookla certify. It's just a matter, you know, to continue push and getting new market share.
I think that the quality of the network is certainly key in order to achieve this target. In terms of enterprise, you know, it was again, a very strong year, +4%. We have an overall market share of 35%. If I look at the public administration sector, we almost reach 50%. We are definitely recognized in the enterprise as a leader. We will continue to push for cloud services, for cybersecurity. We have been awarded as the Italian AWS Rising Star Partner of the Year. You know, we are now doing very strong partnership with the hyperscalers. You know, where we find opportunity also to expand inorganically our offer, we do it.
We've done in the last, basically two years, two, three years, four acquisition, two in the cloud, two in the cybersecurity, because it helps us really to have or to expand our end zone approach on a wider market. Definitely enterprise will continue to perform also in the future. Same thing will apply also to wholesale, where we almost reach a growth in revenues by 20%. If I look at the customer base, it grew almost by 50% in the last quarter. Also here, I think, we have basically signed all the new entrants that enter in the Italian telco or will enter in the Italian telco business.
It's a, you know, it's a proof that we are considered also a leader in the wholesale space. Also here, we will be able clearly to exploit our FTTH expansion, so we will be considered even more interesting for the existing and for new customers in this particular market. If, we look at our position of Tu Sei Futuro, as I said, as a Benefit Company now, we don't have just only financial targets, but we do have also ESG targets. The one just, you know, for your reference, with our, let's say, digital courses at Fastweb Digital Academy, we want to reach 500,000 certificates by 2025.
With STEP, which is this, I would say, permanent workshop on future, we wanna to become the most visited location in Milan by 2025. Also, I think this is extremely important because many times, telco are focusing just on digital infrastructure, but we do think that it's also important to release digital skills, because this will make the difference. In terms of 2023 and environmental target, we already said we wanted to become carbon neutral by 2025. Also, following Swisscom ambition. In terms of summary, as I said, you know, 2022 has been a terrific year. We have been awarded, you know, with the best, let's say, award for both wireline and mobile.
We were able, you know, to grow, even if clearly, especially in Italy, there has been, you know, a macroeconomic scenario that was adverse. We have been able also to grow our best-in-class reputation by adding to the consolidated quality in the infrastructure, also this ambition to digitalize people. We have, you know, several engine of growth that are both, that are all working. Mobile, consumer mobile, enterprise, cloud, and security and wholesale. It gives us high comfort and confidence on the outlook of 2023, which will be other four quarters of growth, and specifically an objective to reach 4% growth in revenues, 2%-3% EBITDA, while CapEx will be stable and so free cash flow will grow accordingly.
Thank you for your time, and then I give the floor to-
Thanks, Alberto.
my colleague.
Excellent handover with growing free cash flows. Welcome. From my side, let's move to the numbers. As usual, I start with group revenue, page 57. Group revenue was down by CHF 71 million at first half, but that's entirely due to the weak euro. The Euro-Swiss franc exchange rate created a negative currency effect of minus CHF 187 million on revenue. Now, net of this currency effect, underlying revenue actually grew by CHF 116 million, with Swisscom Switzerland contributing CHF 37 million, and Fastweb CHF 97 million in Swiss francs or EUR 90 million, as we heard, with a 3.8% growth. Walking through the individual segments, B2C revenue was down minus CHF 18 million.
We had a very benign service revenue development, as we shall see. Hardware revenues were lower, so this basically added up to - 18. In B2B, revenue was up by CHF 99 million, as usual, and during the year, a mix of lower service revenues on the one hand, but higher hardware revenues, and as we heard already, higher solution. The solution revenues, about half of it organic and about half of it non-organic. Wholesale was down -CHF 43 million, but you already know the effect that accounts for half of that number, about - CHF 20 million of those - CHF 43 is the second half of the MVNO agreement that we lost last year. That's totally as anticipated.
The remainder to the EUR 43 million is from roaming revenues, which were down, and interconnection revenues, which were down EUR 23 million. Without any margin impact whatsoever, we have the mirror image later in our payments that were also down in the same order of magnitude. Fastweb, as you already heard, EUR 90 million or EUR 97 million up over the year. As we heard, consumer more or less flat, but enterprise and wholesale with strong growth. Q4 was particularly strong, driven by wholesale development of Swisscom Switzerland. I'll spend some time on service revenue, as this is obviously the most important driver of our P&L. So service revenue was down EUR 49 million. B2C actually up EUR 6 million, and B2B down -EUR 55 million.
Most of you remember the numbers we had in the previous years. In particular, on the B2C side, the difference is stark. We had in 2021 a year-over-year effect in service revenue of -CHF 105 million, and now it's +CHF 6 million. The question is, what happened? We heard a lot already from Dirk Wierzbitzki on some of the things that happened. I'll repeat the most important drivers for that change in service revenue trend. Number one, excellent commercial performance, both on second and third brands, which provided us lots of net adds, but also on the Swisscom brand with a very low churn. That was factor number one, in particular on the wireless side with the success of Wingo.
Factor number two, on ARPU, much less aggressive promotions from our side. The market is pretty much as bad as ever, but much less aggressive promotions from our side. Also a structural discount that contributed to service revenue decline over the last couple of years seems to fade out now, which is fixed mobile convergence. Fixed mobile convergence, for those of you who remember, gave us service revenue downdrafts in the order of magnitude of CHF 100 million or so per year. That's now a single-digit figure, so that also played an important role. We should not forget also on the ARPU wireless side, we do have a bit of an uplift from roaming in there. There's a bit of a roaming rebound. It's not a huge number.
It's single digit, both on B2B and B2C in Q3 and Q4, but it does distort the overall picture a little bit to the upside. Finally, in particular on the wireline side, ARPU, Dirk already mentioned this as well. We did some selective repricings on content packages, on fees, on charges, on discount on charges that previously we granted and now we don't grant anymore. This was also very important. It seems small fry at first sight, but in total, it does add up. In a nutshell, less aggressive pricing from our side on the B2C side, and still very decent commercial results. That formula works for us in 2022. The other revenue components, B2B solutions, as we mentioned, up CHF 70 million.
Very good results, 6.3% growth. I think it was already mentioned, about half of it organic, half of it non-organic. Hardware was up, mainly also on the B2B side. B2C, hardware revenues were down. Wholesale, we already talked about. On the top right corner, service revenue evolution over the last eight quarters or so. I'm not going to talk too much about that because I already talked about this major shift that we can see there from a situation in 2021 where we lost CHF -189 million and just CHF -49 million in 2022. I'd like to talk obviously a bit about the outlook because your obvious question will be, you know, how is this going to evolve into 2023?
Now, my message is let's not get too excited about the pluses on that chart, okay? For B2C service revenue, we do think that a flat service revenue evolution is achievable. We don't take it for granted, and neither should you, but we think flat service revenue evolution in B2C is doable. On the B2B side, we already heard it from Urs. We rather foresee an evolution similar to the run rate that we had in the previous quarters on average. That might average out to about CHF 50 million service revenue loss for 2023. I'll pick that point up again when I talk about the guidance. Bottom right, I'll leave it to you to look at that.
There is not much change in Q4 compared to Q3 in the main drivers of service revenue change. I'll move on to the next page with group EBITDA evolution. As we heard already, EBITDA was CHF 4.406 billion, CHF 72 million down versus previous year. However, a whole list of exceptionals that accumulated over the year. One is FX. There is a -CHF 65 million euro Swiss franc effect in there as well. There were also adjustments on EBITDA. In particular, we had, we booked provisions for regulatory litigation. One in the second quarter when we had to pay a fine of CHF 72 million and book the provision of CHF 82 million. We paid the fine in the meantime.
We booked another one, in the fourth quarter, in the size of CHF 75 million as we reassessed the probabilities of our litigations and the potential potential outcomes. There was also, some of you might remember, positive pension effect in the prior year, CHF 60 million, and that shows up now as a negative year-over-year effect. With all that out of the way, underlying performance of the business was really +CHF 139 million, with Swisscom Switzerland contributing CHF 121 million and Fastweb CHF 30 million or EUR 28 million. The fourth quarter was particularly strong. That was mostly due to phasing issues on the cost side. We anticipated some of that and commented on it already during the year.
I'll highlight it once we go through the individual segments. Starting with B2C. B2C EBITDA up CHF 58 million. Obviously, on the one hand, we have the flat or even slightly positive service revenue, but we also had significant cost savings in the B2C segment and lower subscriber acquisition costs year-over-year. Fourth quarter, particularly strong, mostly bit driven by phasing. The phasing of the cost savings was very much geared toward the fourth quarter. On top of that, lots of advertising spend in 2021 in the fourth quarter and in 2022 in the second quarter when we launched our Blue offering. That also contributed to the positive development.
Some seasonality in direct direct expense in the B2C segment, like sports rights. And others. B2B EBITDA up CHF 9 million. On the one hand, we had the service revenue decline. As we talked about, we also had cost savings on the telco side in the B2B segment, and obviously, a positive EBITDA contribution out of the profitable growth of the IT solutions business. Wholesale, down CHF 7 million. That's much less than what we saw on the revenue side. We managed to compensate for the for the EBITDA impact of the loss of the of the MNO with some cost savings in the wholesale segment and also with a small increase in other other extra services.
The whole roaming story that I mentioned when I talked about revenue has no impact on EBITDA at all. Finally, in Switzerland, infrastructure and support functions up CHF 61 million. This is where a lot of our cost savings take place in the infrastructure section and in the support function. Also here, heavily geared towards the fourth quarter. We talked about this evolution during the year, so this should not come as a surprise. Finally, Fastweb up CHF 30 million. The fourth quarter was a bit weak on EBITDA. Alberto mentioned it. We had higher energy costs, in particular in the fourth quarter compared to the previous years and some other seasonal effects. Moving on to the Swiss side, EBITDA Swisscom Switzerland, we talked about revenue.
Subscriber acquisition cost was lower this year, no change in the fourth quarter. Out-payments were lower, so this is the matching position to the lower wholesale roaming revenues that I talked about. No margin impact. Costs for goods and services purchased were higher than in the previous year by CHF 33 million, obviously due to the higher hardware revenues that we booked in the B2B segment. Most importantly, also in 2022, we achieved our indirect cost savings targets in the telco business with plus CHF 104 million. Most of it or a lot of it in the fourth quarter, as we discussed in the previous earnings calls.
Obviously, costs for the solution business were up CHF 47 million compared to the previous year because of the increased revenue from the IT solutions business. Talking about cost savings, just a quick glance at what we did over the last seven years. Over the last seven years, we managed to save in total CHF 712 million in indirect costs, so an average of CHF 100 million per year. What is the outlook on this? You know, you can't save CHF 100 million costs forever. That's mathematically not possible, but we don't think we are there yet. We still think we can manage to save costs in the order of magnitude of CHF 100 million per year, but there are compensating effects in 2023.
We will have increased costs due to inflation. Salary increase is one of them, energy increase is another, and some other smaller items. While we do still aim for CHF 100 million of cross cost savings, the net figure will be about half of that. I'll also take that up again when talk about the guidance. CapEx on the next page. CapEx was essentially flat at CHF 2.3 billion for the group. Slightly up for Switzerland at CHF 1.7 billion. Slightly up in euro for Fastweb and down in Swiss francs, but no major change. Alberto also mentioned that before. On the right-hand side, you see the main building blocks of our CapEx spend in Switzerland.
We did spend, as anticipated, a bit less on wireless this year than in the previous year, and a bit less on fiber. On fiber, I'd like to remind you that the FTTS rollout has come to an end. As anticipated, our fiber spend was a bit lower than CHF 500 million. However, we do confirm that the envelope going forward, for the fiber rollout will be between CHF 500 million and CHF 600 million over the next over the next three years. We spend on backbone transport infrastructure, I think Christoph mentioned some of these initiatives, and on IT and others. Obviously, some of these investments are needed in order to reap the benefit and cost efficiency down the road. First, you need to invest, and then you can harvest.
I'll move on to page 63, free cash flow bridge. Free cash flow is very strong at CHF 1.349 billion Swiss francs. Down CHF 164 million year-over-year. Two reasons. One is operating free cash flow box, it was down CHF 80 million, but that includes all the exceptionals. If we would adjust that would obviously be significantly higher. The second reason was CHF 99 million cash income taxes paid. More cash taxes paid in 2022, which is a mere phasing issue. Still, again, very good dividend coverage of our dividend of CHF 1.14 million. I'll move on to the net income bridge. Net income very solid at CHF 1.602 billion.
Main components, EBIT CHF 2.04 billion, down year-over-year, just CHF 26 million. Also this unadjusted and including all the exceptionals. From maybe the other two components to net income, tax expense - CHF 57 million, still very low. As we shall see, we still have about 1% average interest rate, and tax expense was CHF 360 million. At 18.3%, we are now close to what you should assume is our expected tax rate going forward, which we highlighted before as 19%. This year we are very close to the steady state in that regard. Net income was CHF 230 million below last year, but that's due to a whole list of exceptionals.
On the one hand, the EBITDA exceptionals that I mentioned, but also mentioned many times during the year. We had an exceptionally high financial income in the previous year, due to the Fibercop transaction and the BICS transaction and the positive effect on taxes also in the previous year. If you add all that up, that becomes quite a big number, CHF 410 million. If you were to adjust that to get to a trusted net income increase, you would end up at a plus of CHF 180 million. Financing side, not much news. Net debt down to CHF 7.374 billion. Leverage stable at 1.7x. Ratings stable at A.
Still a very conservative financing mix with a very spread out maturity profile over the next many, many years. High fixed floating mix with 82% fixed interest. Very low interest rate, 1.05% on average on our debt portfolio. Very strong liquidity position with CHF 2.2 billion in committed credit lines unused. Let's talk about the outlook for 2023. I'll walk you through the guidance step by step. Revenue guidance for 2023, CHF 11.1 billion-CHF 11.2 billion. Switzerland about CHF 8.6 billion, so stable and fast growing with 4%, as Alberto mentioned. Jumping to CapEx, stable at about CHF 2.3 billion. That gives me more time to talk about EBITDA, which is certainly the more interesting piece.
Guidance for EBITDA 2023 is CHF 4.6 billion-CHF 4.7 billion. How do we get there from CHF 4.406 billion in 2022 to CHF 4.6 billion-CHF 4.7 billion? Let me walk you through it step by step. Number one, first we need to deal with technical effects. We need to eliminate the one-offs, the exceptionals in the EBITDA figure 2022. Starting from CHF 4.406 billion, we need to add back CHF 152 million of exceptionals in 2022, which yields an adjusted EBITDA of CHF 4.558 billion. You will find that number on page 71 in the appendix to the analyst presentation. CHF 4.558 billion is the adjusted EBITDA for 2022.
We have another technical effect. Our pension expense, that's IFRS pension expense, it's a non-cash effect. Our pension expense will decrease by CHF 90 million in 2023 compared to 2022, due to higher interest rate. That's how the formula works. That gives us another uplift of CHF 90 million. The real starting point is about CHF 4,650 million. CHF 4,650 million is the real starting point if you add back all the technical, all the technical, all the technical components. From there, we start actually talking about the operating changes from 2022- 2023. Here our guidance, the operating guidance for EBITDA Swisscom Switzerland is flat. We assume, as mentioned, a service revenue decline of about CHF 50 million. Compensating for that, a decrease in indirect costs of about CHF 50 million.
These two factors, we expect to balance out over the year. There are some other risks in the Swiss business which we would like to highlight. One is, on the wholesale side, BTS backhauling might come in lower than in the previous year or than in 2022. There could be a normalization of subscriber acquisition costs. That's on the risk side. There are also upsides. Obviously, profitable growth from the IT solution business. That's a clear upside. We do expect from today's point of view, these risks and upsides to balance out. One word to a potential upside that you might have in mind, but that doesn't play a big role, at least in 2023, is the potential renewal of the Salt agreement.
You remember the discussion we had in Q1 2021 about IFRS 16 and all that. While we still believe that the economic, essentially the long-term economic effect of this agreement, will be in place, the short-term impact, on our EBITDA in the wholesale segment will be rather small and doesn't play a big role in the guidance, for 2023. Finally, Fastweb. EBITDA growth in the order of magnitude of 2%-3%, and this is how we end up, in the range of CHF 4.6 billion-CHF 4.7 billion. If we reach these targets by the end of the year, we will again, propose to pay out the dividend of CHF 22 per share. With that, I hand back to Christoph for a wrap-up.
Thank you, Eugen. Just one last slide as a wrap-up before we go into questions. From my point of view, the situation is simple and clear. We had a successful 2022. We have a good strategy with clear priorities for 2023. We are very focused on executing this strategy to deliver and reap the benefits in the coming quarters. We are, as Eugen said, committed to solid financials and a continued stable dividend in the future. With this, I close the presentation and hand over to Louis.
Thank you, Christoph. Now it's time for the Q&A session. Some remarks to the people being registered for rising questions. Use the Raise Your Hand feature to ask your questions, speak loud and clear so that everyone on the webcast can follow the discussion. Please indicate your name and institute you're representing at the beginning. Let's now start the second part of the meeting. With the first question coming from Polo Tang, UBS.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking the questions. I have three. The first question is really just about competitive dynamics. As you mentioned that the Swiss market remains promotional, can you comment in more detail in terms of what you're seeing from the competition in terms of the current quarter, Q1 2023, and how does this compare to a year ago? Second question is really just about use of cash going forward. Just given the better-than-expected trends across the business, can you maybe talk about how you're thinking about shareholder returns longer term? Is there a scope for either a growing dividend or alternatively, given the low leverage, would you consider share buybacks? My third question is really just about Italy in terms of EU recovery funds.
How much of an uplift will this be for Fastweb in 2023, and how much of an impact have the EU recovery funds had on the Italian market if we look back in 2022? Thanks.
Thank you, Polo. I think the first question on competition can be answered either by Dirk.
Yeah.
Maybe followed or also by Urs. Thereafter, second question, use of cash by Eugen.
Mm-hmm.
The Italy question, by you, Alberto.
Okay. Regarding competitive dynamics, I believe the question was also particular to Q1 this year against last year. First of all, I mean, you know, quite a lot of what you see in Q1 already happened in Q4, obviously. You know, as the order entries become additions or as churn entries become real churn. In Q1, you quite often do see a little bit of what happened in Q4. We had a rather, let's say, competitive Q4 from a promotional standpoint, particularly around, you know, Black Friday or now it's even the Black November type of days. Which, you know, for some, really accumulates a large chunk of sales proportions throughout the year is centered toward not only Q4, but then to November.
We see even that some sales that usually happened in December now come, are being brought forward, you know, to November and others are, let's say, you know, put on hold until November actually occurs. That in itself we don't find, you know, too much of a healthy development. As Swisscom own brand, we had, you know, almost no promotional activities. We work quite active as Wingo. That is paying off as additions that we see right now. We do see some cancellations. Nothing, you know, to overly worry about. We see competitors' activity around, you know, the Black November that is coming in now. You know, there's slight signs. I mean, obviously, you know, the January is then not as intense as the November is.
For instance, with Sunrise we have seen, and that's something we welcome, you know, that they have cut back promotions from 24 months to 12 months. It's in any case not a good idea to have a 24-month promotion because that coincides with the minimum contract period. That is a different story. They have basically cut back a little bit there, but it does remain competitive. It does remain competitive, particularly around the second brands, yeah, like our brand Wingo or Salt or Yallo. I think, you know, one thing that remains to be seen and is really interesting to look at in the marketplace, you know, where do Sunrise positioning self?
You know, are they, you know, playing with a brand in the, let's say price sensitive, you know, price-led market or as they actually desire and sometimes communicate but the word doesn't, let's say, follow through with the action. Do they also want to be seen like in a, in a, in a quality, segment of the market? Which by the way is still the majority of Swiss consumers are quality-led. You know, when we look at our own customer base, we see that only 25% or so are price sensitive. There's 30%-40% that are not at all price sensitive. They just buy whatever you can sell them, the, the highest tariffs and so on. Another 30%-40% are like in between. They're looking, let's say, for value. Yeah.
As Christoph said it, you know, the Swiss consumer environment or the macroeconomic environment is still a good environment. I mean, there's low unemployment. There's compared to other places, low inflation and so on and so forth. We are not overly seeing, let's say, any accelerated trend towards seeking bargains. Yeah, there's a certain segment that is after bargains, but we are not seeing any acceleration. To my perspective, au contraire, I think what we have seen in the marketplace, that people that were lured into, you know, cheap tariffs, eventually figured out that, you know, cheap tariffs and great quality just don't go along.
Which is the reason why the competition has rather high churn and is also the reason that, I'm not sure whether, you know Louis is going to keep me, but you know, for the first time also in last year we had a balanced, net porting relationship. As many customers that has left have come back, you know, from the others because eventually they figure out, you know, a cheap price alone doesn't do the trick as they're seeking for quality, which still the majority of Swiss consumers do.
On B2B, I guess in the SME space, more or less the same dynamics as mentioned by Dirk. In the corporate segment, we had a strong Q4, you know, in order entry, which for sure will drive also our business in Q1. Overall, I would say, more or less stable in comparison to a year-on-year basis for Q1, 2022. As far as we can see it now, just starting into February. Yeah. Okay.
Right.
Good. I'll take question number two on shareholder remuneration. As you know, our financial policy has 2 main pillars. One is attractive shareholder returns, and the other is a very solid balance sheet. We have achieved both over the last many, many years. On attractive shareholder return, we are committed to pay out a high share of free cash flow in dividends. We have done so in the past, and we'll do so in the future. We will not pay uncovered dividends, but we do have a high payout ratio. At the same time, we are committed to a stable dividend policy, and stable and reliable dividends policy.
At this point in time, there is no discussion whatsoever on the board level with regard to, with regard to cash or cash utilization policy, as you mentioned. Now, sometimes we do get the smart question, you know, what would it take for such a discussion to happen at the board level? I anticipate this question. Our answer is always it would take a proven, substantial, and sustainable increase in free cash flow. Proven, substantial, and sustainable. We are not there.
Right. Thank you.
Okay. I take the third question. Basically, just to refresh what kind of bid has been backed by EU funds. We are talking about the for the school, the, let's say, provisioning fiber connection to 10,000 school. For the second one, we're talking about the fiber provisioning to 12,000, sorry, healthcare sites. It's a project that will take a long time. Basically, we started in September. I would say that the financial impact in 2022 was extremely limited. Also in 2023, we will be not, you know, completing the project. I would say that, you know, it will have an impact into 2023, but nothing major.
Bear in mind that, you know, these are normal bids for us because we are used to win big bids coming from the public administration. You know, I would continue to assume a solid growth for enterprise, you know, regardless these European funds. Thanks.
Thank you.
Thank you, Polo. Fine. All right. Thank you. Let's move to next question coming from Jakob Bluestone, Credit Suisse.
Hi, good afternoon. Hopefully, you can hear me okay. I've got three questions as well. Firstly, on the guidance, you're guiding for flat service revenues from B2C. Given the very strong performance you've delivered, and I'd say the generally fairly upbeat message on that segment, why are you not more bullish in your guidance on B2C's revenue contribution? Is that just being a bit conservative or if you can maybe just elaborate on that. Secondly, on free cash flow, which you obviously described as the sort of key underpinning element for your future thinking around dividends. Can you maybe just help us bridge free cash flow for 2023? I guess you've got tax normalizing some of the one-offs going away, EBITDA going up.
Where should we land, sort of roughly on free cash flow, kind of CHF 1.6 billion-ish? Is that kind of the right ballpark? Just thirdly, on fiber specifically, is there any pressure on you to go beyond your current fiber coverage targets? I appreciate right now, Switzerland's not a sort of major outlier on fiber, but if you look at the fiber rollouts for some of the other European countries, the sort of 55%-60% would be one of the lowest fiber coverage ratios in Western Europe, in the sort of longer term. Can you just help us understand, you know, is there pressure from politicians to go beyond that? Do you envisage eventually ending up above that ratio?
Just your thinking around how far could you go on fiber coverage in the long term? Thank you.
Thank you, Jakob. The first two questions are typical CFO questions, guidance and free cash flow. The third question, fiber rollout, will be taken by our CEO, Christoph.
Yes. Maybe on the B2C service revenue guidance and happy for Dirk to jump in. What I mentioned when I talked about the service revenue trend is that on the B2C side, as well as on the B2B side, in particular in the third and the fourth quarter, that you might take as a reference point for what could happen in the next quarters. We do have a positive effect from roaming rebound. It's not massive, but it's big enough, you know, to make it look like there is an increase, but in reality, it's more a flat evolution. This is the very simple answer from my side. I don't know, Dirk, any additional comments?
No, I mean, look, it's, you know, it will continue to be a competitive environment. When you look at 22, I think, you know, we were on the mobile side, quite successful. With gaining customers on second and third, and particularly the second brand, lost a few on the own brand and then had a bit of brand shift and with the respective ARPU impact there. I think, you know, we're on a good trajectory there. Nonetheless, I think, you know, not only for the first brand but also for the second brand, we are looking at, you know, what type of promotional levels we want to maintain.
If you look at the second brand market, basically, there's the anchor price for, like, a full flat in mobile that went from CHF 30- CHF 25- CHF 20, roughly. We wanna make an effort to bring that up again, you know, towards the CHF 25 really, yeah. How that exactly then pans out, I think, you know, remains to be seen as we are also playing with price and promotion level in that space, yeah. Yeah, on the broadband side, broadband is a, is, you know, has been a challenging year also for some external effects. Yeah, we need to see how that pans out, you know, as we are ramping up again our fiber sales.
Then also we need to be able on the second brand to activate the mobile base in terms of cross-selling also for the broadband. There are some uncertainties around that. Lastly, you know, I alluded to the fact that we do quite a lot of migrations, you know, from the base in terms of the back book pricing to front book pricing. There's always two sides to this. You know, there are certain, you know, customers in the base where we can do a value uplift, but then there's others also, as you phase out, that can do some optimization, yeah. Obviously, we are not looking for the customer's optimization. We look for our optimization in that case.
Again, you know, and some even might, you know, because of price increases, you know, there might be a limited churn and so on. There are some uncertainties around it, and I think all of that is reflected a little bit in the plan. Yeah.
Right. Thank you. Second question.
Okay. On free cash flow, I certainly would not like to get into guidance for free cash flow. There is a reason we guide for EBITDA and CapEx. Let me give you two or three hints in that regard. One is the bridge from the EBITDA 2022- 2023, where I explained what you have to add back to get to the starting point. Most of that is non-cash. Provisions taken in 2022. The pension cost effect. That's all non-cash. That will not end up in a free cash flow year-over-year positive change from 2022-20 23. That's one important element. Another element you mentioned, tax. Tax has pretty much normalized in our view.
I mean, obviously, it depends on EBT of the respective year, but this has pretty much normalized. If you think about free cash flow going forward and build your bridge from 2022, you need to take into account our operating improvements in EBITDA, but you need to take a very close look at those things that are technically up but that are not cash.
Thank you. Christoph?
On the fiber question. Actually, last year in October, when we announced the new 2025 targets, we also announced the 2030 target, which might have not been noticed that much, but we announced that our intention is to build 70%- 80% fiber coverage until the end of the decade, obviously striving for the upper end. If you take into account the already existing other fiber turf in Switzerland, because that is roughly today about 10% third party or non-Swisscom fiber coverage, then you get up to quite substantial fiber coverage in sort of around 80%, 85%-ish, 90% range by the end of the decade, which is totally in line, I would say, with what other European countries are doing as well.
That's the plan, and it's not fully committed yet, but we are, let's say, striving to achieve those targets by the end of the decade.
Thank you.
All right. Thank you, Jakob. Next question coming from Georgios Ierodiaconou. Good to welcome you, Georgios. Not upside down this year.
Hopefully.
Hopefully.
You never know.
Thank you. I'll follow the lead of Polo and Jakob, and I will also ask three questions. The first one is on improvement we're seeing in your relative commercial performance. I know you discussed the behavior of the customer, but I'm curious because there was a pause in the active footprint for fiber, so that cannot be the driver of your stronger relative performance. I just wanted to understand whether you believe it's the mobile network, whether it's execution in terms of the customer experience that is making this difference. Also, I did notice on page 32, you have this graph of the Net Promoter Score, and one of your competitors is seeing quite a significant deterioration. Whether you expect that to normalize, any comments you can make?
I know you may not wanna comment extensively on that, but anything you can give us in terms of your expectation for 2023. My second question is on alternative fiber build. It's been fairly modest in recent years in terms of the growth of alternative networks. There are some ambitious plans that have been announced or are being planned. I just wanted to get a better understanding whether you believe there are areas where you could be overbuilt.
In as part of your existing plan of deployment. I just wanted to also better understand whether there are any options on IRUs or co-investment as you are rolling out your own network in Italy. I just wanted your comments in terms of your expectations, but also your position as the biggest alternative wholesale provider in the market, whether you'll be supportive of these things, whether there's antitrust concerns that you wanna raise. Thank you.
Thank you, Georgios. I think the first two questions on commercial performance and FTP edge deployment goes to our CEO, Christoph. Last question is very clear, Alberto will take over.
The commercial performance, as you mentioned, there is an improvement in last year. We believe this improvement has several different components. As some of you mentioned already, we are extremely focused on delivering a better customer experience, both in B2C but also on the B2B side, improving the digital interaction, self-service capabilities, both on the sales side but also on the service side. I think this is an important contributor afterwards to the Net Promoter Score in our customer base. We have a super high quality focus as well as we outlined in the presentation, continuously improving the reliability, but also the speed in the network.
Last but not least, you know, in a market where products become more and more interchangeable, especially on the B2C side, I mean, everybody basically delivers the same speed profiles. We believe that brand becomes much more critical in the execution or success in the country. We therefore invest heavily in our brand posture, especially also in the area of sustainability, because it is a topic that is quite important for the Swiss citizens, and it sort of pays into the brand position we have in the country. I think if you add all those components together, next to some other things we are doing, then you end up with a better commercial performance.
Next to obviously executing well within the sales force and having the right pricing, the right bundles, the right product configurations, which is obviously also, I mean, it's needless to say, also important. Now on the fiber build, I think it's quite interesting question you're raising. We are fully committed on building as much fiber as we can. We are basically using nearly all available construction capacity in Switzerland, rolling out hundreds of thousands of lines every year. I think with the market share we have today in B2C and combined with wholesale, you have to be quite optimistic to start an overbuild scenario, because it's probably gonna be not so easy to get your, let's say, make the investment profitable.
I would argue that the overbuild scenario is, I mean, it is always possible, but seems to me not so likely. Maybe, you also alluded, you know, to sort of joint construction. We are also open to co-construct locally, and we have built with local partners, mainly utility companies in many areas to reduce cost. There have lately also been rumors about us engaging in a nationwide fiber JV, which I would like to comment on that this is absolutely not true. We are not negotiating or have not agreed on any nationwide fiber JV rollout.
Alberto?
Okay. On the single network or on the national network, I think this topic has been extremely fashionable. There is just a new chapter, which is, you know, the KKR bid. I think a new chapter will come also because, you know, by reading the newspaper also, probably, there could be also another bid coming from Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. Our point is that, you know, we are not involved. We are just basically, we want the competition to be preserved because as I said in my presentation, we do believe in our role in infrastructure. We do believe that, you know, we want to continue to compete also in the wholesale business, which is extremely important for us.
You know, if you mention antitrust, if there will be, you know, some remedies that are necessary, we'll be more than happy to look at such a remedy package. If, you know, there is, you know, some sustainable business to do with it, we will look carefully to the dossier.
Thank you, Alberto. Thank you, Georgios. Next question is coming from Josh Mills, Goldman Sachs.
Hi there. Josh Mills at BNP Paribas Exane. Couple of questions from my side. The first one was just related to the pricing in Switzerland. You talked here about selective price adjustments. Can you just confirm whether that's on front book or back book pricing? Maybe just a few lines on your thoughts around back book pricing pieces going forward. I know that Salt has introduced a provision to allow them to do this, but haven't yet taken the step to do so. The second and third question is just around Fastweb. Historically, they've had fairly lumpy one-off incomes, which helped EBITDA, I think, in the second quarter.
This year to the tune of about CHF 40 million. In the past, you've said that you don't include that kind of one-off benefit in your guidance, but when I look at the 2%-3% EBITDA guide for next year, it looks like something may be included. Just a bit of a sense of whether or not you think you can continue to gain those re-regulatory incomes. Third and finally, again, related to Fastweb. Could you comment on how much you received for the sale of IRUs in 2022, what that was for revenue and EBITDA, and then also how much you're assuming for 2023? Thanks very much.
Thank you, Josh. First question will be answered by Dirk.
Okay, in terms of I think the question was particularly around front book, back book. There's still quite a few hundred thousand consumer in the base that have older tariff schemes that are now outphased. Like VIVO, as it was called on the Via line side, or Infinity and InOne on the Via is on the convergence side. We are basically looking at phasing out these old portfolios.
You know, as we do that, obviously, we will try to migrate people to higher value and then obviously also higher priced, you know, schemes, which I believe, let's say there's good arguments for it, you know, because the deal, most is then is a, you know, pay a bit more, but you get a lot more in terms of, you know, whatever connectivity, broadband TV and so on and so forth. I think, you know, that can pan out quite nicely, and there's quite a, quite a potential for that. Yeah. We're looking at other spaces also. There's like one-time fees and so on and so forth that occur here and there. We look at our content pricing also in, in sports. I think that is...
That I can say. you know, how to make certain adjustments there. Then I believe the other question was, or what you were alluding to is that, you know, others also in the marketplace have made CPI provisions in their terms and conditions. Yeah. We are looking at that, and we also will make a CPI clause and introduce it. We will announce it in early March, and then it comes active in June. From my perspective, you know, that type of a provision is a little bit, let's say, overstated in a way. Yeah. We know that in the U.K. and elsewhere, you know, they have that, and they regularly actually execute the consumer price index price increase.
As that inflation is still low, luckily is low and hopefully remains low or becomes even lower. Nonetheless, let's say we want to introduce such a provision. Actually, whether we actually, let's say, utilize it or not is a totally different story, and that is something we might want to look later in the year. First of all, we want to see, you know, how the year develops, our activities as we have laid them out actually come through and shape up, and then we look at potential other measures or not.
Thank you, Dirk. Second and third question will be answered by Alberto.
Yes. I'll say that, you know, again, our growth in EBITDA, I wouldn't say that is particularly linked to regulatory one-off. Certainly also, you were mentioning also in our history, there have been cases where regulatory impact has favorably contributed. I would say that in 2022 and also in 2023, this will be limited. Bear in mind, if you were referring also to the overall performance of EBITDA growth in 2022 of roughly 3%, we were able to absorb an extra cost on energy of roughly CHF 20 million-CHF 25 million. I would say that our EBITDA performance has been consistent regardless, let's say, this regulatory one-off. I could say the same thing also to IRU.
IRU have been always, you know, part of our business by having this extended infrastructure. IRU is just, you know, a service that we deliver to our customer. As they were in 2022, they will be also in 2023, but I would consider them, as I said, just a part of our business. Just to mention, wholesale, we are really. A lot of the growth will come from the ultra broadband customer base development. To cut a long story short, I would say that this one-off really did not impact or they were not determinant for the EBITDA growth, neither in 2022 nor in 2023.
Thank you, Alberto. Josh, I think your questions are answered. Let's move to the next question coming from Yemi Falana.
Good afternoon, everyone. It's Yemi Falana at Goldman Sachs. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe if I start on Swiss competition. Given the numerous moves you've seen at the value end of the market, yallo, Wingo, et cetera, while your performance has been strong, do you have any concerns that the value segment of the market is expanding? Secondly, just on energy costs, you've absorbed some energy headwinds in both Switzerland and Italy this year. Could you talk about the absolute headwind at the group level and perhaps for the individual businesses into 2023? Finally, maybe I could ask the use of cash question in another way. How urgently and what scale, with will you pursue inorganic opportunities on the IT solution side in both Switzerland and Italy? Thank you very much.
Thank you. First question goes in direction of Dirk. Second is Eugen, and third, CEO Christoph.
Okay. If I understood correctly, the question was, you know, the kind of price sensitive. You call it value. We actually see value more like in the price incentive, but probably that's a definition question. The price sensitive, you know, segment is that growing with that is being serviced the likes like Yallo and Wingo and so on? Yes, it is somewhat growing. I mean, you have seen that also with us. I mean, we have growth on Wingo, others have growth on Yallo and so on and so forth. It is somewhat growing. Overall, as you know, said earlier on, as you know, to our insight and our experience, Switzerland is a quality-led market, and there's you know, a particular segment which is not the entire market.
It's actually, it's a subset or a smaller piece of the market that is served by, you know, these types of brands. An interesting, you know, fact here is, you know, you might even know that one competitor had even introduced a new scheme for CHF 10 a month, yeah, that is sold with GoMo, yeah. That is not, you know, at least to our knowledge, not getting any traction because even consumers find that so cheap that they have doubt that anything this cheap can be of any quality at all. Which is I think good, yeah, and that is how it should be and that's my point to the second brand market.
I said earlier on, I believe also in the second brand market, there is opportunity, and we want to execute that, to lower, you know, promotional activity in that space.
Thank you, Dirk. Next second question goes to Eugen.
Yes. Energy costs into 2023. On the Swiss side, we are almost fully hedged, so we know what we'll get in 2023. The impact year-over-year will be an additional energy cost in the low double-digit numbers. It's part of those CHF 50 million that I mentioned of inflation, driven cost increases that compensate for our gross cost savings. That's the Swiss side. In Fastweb, we are now at about 50% hedging for 2023, the situation is a bit more open and depends on the spot prices to come during the year. At price levels that we see right now, we expect no year-over-year impact to 2022. If any, maybe a bit of an upside.
All right. Last question.
Okay, regarding use of cash, for inorganic IT moves, I think what is important on that side is that from our point of view, the IT market is a growing market. IT and telecom services are moving closer together and, or converging in some areas like in cybersecurity and networking with the SASE trends. Since several years, we are constantly screening the market, both in Italy and in Switzerland for potential M&A moves. We will execute any opportunity which at the end creates shareholder value and is good for the customers and Swisscom, as a company and its shareholders. Think it is then. We have already done numerous acquisitions in the past.
We will certainly look at some this year as well in both countries and, but there is nothing, let's say, more to say around that area today.
All right. Thank you, Christoph. Thank you, Yemi. Next question comes from Titus Krahn, Bank of America.
Yes. Thanks very much for taking my question. Good afternoon, and thanks for a very comprehensive presentation. Just a couple from my side. First, maybe quick follow-up on Yemi's cost question, given you have this CHF 50 million Swiss franc guidance for the Swiss division. Just could you give us a bit more insight into what wage inflation you would expect from April 2023? I think Sunrise had a lot, about 2%-3% increase in the wages. Is that a good proxy for you? On the cost-saving side, should we expect a similar development throughout the year that you have more cost savings in Q4 and Q3 compared to the first half?
Maybe quickly on your enterprise segment, given that it's still a bit negative, and actually slightly weaker compared to Q3, do you see any impact from the macro environment on demand? Apparently not in the solutions business, but on the telco side, even though you have this kind of quite good economy in Switzerland and relatively low inflation. Maybe just if I can, a very quick third question, just on these 500,000 fiber homes which are going to be upgraded or changed from GP to MP to P2P. Why does it take such a long time, given that I think you'll plan to still have quite a few of them in 2025?
What should we expect as a reasonable cost for upgrading, one of those households from one technology to the other?
Thank you, Titus. First question goes to Eugen, second to Urs, third question to Christoph.
Okay, quick answers. The 2%-3% wage inflation from April 1st is a reasonable guidance. That's it. On the phasing of cost savings over the year, we have nothing very useful to say. It's always okay getting small numbers by quarter if you start with a CHF 550 million number for the whole year. You know, there are lots of variations within the quarters. We have no useful guidance in terms of trend over the year at this point in time.
Over to you.
In the enterprise market, for the telco business, we definitely still have solid dynamics in, let's say losing some customers and winning back other ones on lower price levels. This is, as I laid out in my explanations, also our perception towards 2023, still a market environment which is rough. We see definitely, let's say some potential upsides on winning back customers which have made experiences, which weren't good enough to their expectation on quality after leaving us. On the other hand, we definitely can say our win back ratio 2022 was solid, but we also lost a few larger customers in 2022.
I fundamentally believe that the guidance that we put in the place looking forward is serious and has a balanced profile on risks and opportunity.
Thank you. Urs?
On the fiber rollout, what is important to understand is that we have about a one-year delay between decision of changing the strategy and the actual implementation in the field. We decided in October last year to change to point-to-point. Everything that we have built since then and that we will build roughly until end of December, early autumn, is still in point-to-multipoint mode. At the end of last year, we had 500,000 lines which were constructed in multipoint. This number will actually go further up this year and increase to roughly 800K lines that need to be retrofitted. In our plan, currently, we will retrofit about approximately a bit over half of those lines until 2025.
There will still be a chunk remaining after 25, and that's why it also why it takes us such a long time. We, in terms of money, we expect to spend about CHF 50 million per year on the retro fitting. This is included in the CHF 500 million-CHF 600 million wireline FTTH rollout CapEx guidance.
Right. Thank you. Thank you, Titus. Next question comes from Usman Ghazi, Berenberg.
Hi, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity. I've got two questions, please. The first question was just going back to the comment at the start of the presentation about the tougher stance from the competition authorities. Could you perhaps give an indication of which area the higher provisions were taken in 2022, you know, including the provision taken in Q4? You know, if the actual exposure has a risk of being much higher than what has been provided, and if all of this is related to that 1 case of market abuse on ADSL. That was the first question.
The second question was going to some news flow that came out, I think, late last year, about Quickline, the cable network, looking to expand, you know, on a national basis and were interested in a deal with you to expand their network. I just wanted to ask if you're willing to comment if you are in talks with them, you know, and if any deal like that with a party other than Salt, you know, on your fiber network would be interesting or not. Thank you.
Thank you, Usman. The first question goes to Eugen. The second one will be answered by Christoph.
Okay. The first one, yes, the tougher stance from the competition authorities. Every quarter, every quarter, we look at our, you know, pending regulatory and competition litigations and form an opinion about the likelihood of various scenarios taking place and the financial impact of those scenarios. We learn as we go. Every quarter, the outcome is not necessarily the same as in the previous quarter. In the fourth quarter, we did such a reassessment and booked this provision that I mentioned. What did we learn in the fourth quarter? We had another two or three rulings that came our way that went against us again. One example is the Federal Court that upheld the measures of the Competition Authority on the fiber rollout.
After we lost at the Federal Administrative Court, we lost at the final court. That is just one example, but there are others. We reassess the, you know, probabilities and financial impact of some of the outstanding litigations. Now, I trust you understand that we cannot give, you know, any indication whether this is for one legal case or for several legal cases or for which legal case. That would not be a good service to our shareholders to do so.
Quickline is a quick answer. Quickline is a wholesale customer of Swisscom. We have a wholesale agreement with them for the entire Swiss national footprint. This is what they are using as a basis for their national expansion.
Thank you. Thank you, Usman. Next question comes from Steve Malcolm, Redburn.
Yeah, good afternoon, Louis. Thanks for letting me ask the questions. I'll go for three if I can. First of all, I guess if we look back over 2022, the big sort of positive surprise has been your outperformance on Swiss, sorry, Swiss service revenues, particularly in consumer. It feels like your execution has been pretty consistent, you know, I guess your competitors clearly have been less so. I would love just to sort of hear an explanation as to what has surprised you positively. Is it just the Swiss consumer's sort of unwillingness to be dragged in by discounted tariffs, as you kind of alluded to? You know, how do you see that evolve going forward? Clearly you're talking about a very promotional market, and yet you're spending less on acquisition and subsidy.
You know, you're doing all the right things. Just curious to know, you know, where that positive surprise has really been and how you think about that evolving. Secondly, just looking at your sort of, your cost performance in Q4. You know, clearly the variable, Your other operating costs have been very good, but also your direct costs were down despite the fact that your equipment revenues were up quite substantially in the quarter. I think you talked about lower content costs. You know, any further light you can shed on that? When I do the math, it looks like your growth margin's gone up by about 250 basis points, which is quite a big move. Just any sort of, any color on that direct cost performance.
Finally, just on capitalized costs, I think you were up about CHF 70 million this year. You're up about CHF 200 million in the last two years. Clearly, that's quite supportive to the overall cost picture and EBITDA. I... Just to sort of follow up on Josh's question on cost of and other costs and capitalized costs, can you help us understand how we should think about the capitalized cost picture in 2023 and beyond? Is there still upside there, more cost to be capitalized? Thanks.
Thank you, Steve, for those three questions. The first question will be answered by Dirk. Second question, third question are financial questions by Eugen.
In terms of revenue performance, B2C last year, I think there is not the single one thing that happened. It's really, you know, probably a dozen or two that has happened. Some there's like external influence and some are, I would say like internally engineered and executed, yeah. Like external, Eugen already mentioned, you know, better than expected roaming revenues. We had less than expected voice line cuts, for instance, and that helped, and a couple of other effects, yeah. The biggest part is really truly cutting down on promotions, from 12 to six months, and instead of giving half-price promotions, only giving a moderate discount. I think that is really one of the biggest impacts there.
We did increase, you know, certain fees, you know, initial setup fees, both in Yalline and in Yallis. In Yalline, due for whatever reason, you know, we had a high level of rebates, you know, or discounts on that, and we eliminated that. We're really consequently, you know, asking for that fee to be billed. You know, we really put the entire organization on value and ARPU management. You know, we beefed up our effort, for instance, in customer retention. By now we are able, you know, 40% of customers that request termination from us to hold them back, yeah. We up that from like a 30% level. That, you know, in its own right, makes an impact.
We are consequently going into minimum contract duration management, be it for those customers that have been acquired, like new customers, as they come out of period, or when we go into the base and do retention deals. You know, we consequently demand, you know, a new contract period, yeah, thus having a more, you know, locked in issue with customer base, yeah. The whole incentive scheme for the channels is such that they better sell a higher tier tariff than a lower tier tariff. I mean, which of course sounds logical, but you know, some of that we have just not executed or not executed well.
You know, so we sophisticated our efforts in that, both from a channel perspective, but equally also as we do the tiering for subsidies or incentives, you know, as seen from the consumer, which then makes for a better ARPU. And then obviously, particularly on mobile, the biggest reason is really the better than expected performance, particularly on the second branch. You know, I mean there, we had really, really great explore that we didn't seize thus far, as it turned out, and we're very pleased with that. That were the 22 effects, yeah. Not all of them you can redo in 2023, which is, you know, what informs our outlook then for 23 as we discussed it.
Can I quickly follow up and ask whether the decisions to sort of cut promotional discounts was in response to seeing the NPS of your competitors falling? Was that something you envisaged, or was that, you know, did you see enough, you know, evidence in the marketplace to allow you to do that? It doesn't feel like it's something you predicted at the start of the year when you gave guidance, or is that something that you were able to do in response to others' failures, for want of a better word?
Well, look, I think yes, we had a strategic discussion, if you wish, and Christoph talked about that. He said, "Well, look, we want to execute on our brand promise, particularly for when it comes to Swisscom as a brand, and go for quality, customer experience, and all of that." We saw also like weaknesses coming up with the competition. You saw the NPS chart as I had it there. So that was not entirely new last year, but it was kind of like showing. We said we go clearly into a brand and quality play, and reduce our activities on the promotional side.
Okay, question number two. The direct direct cost in Q4, in particular in B2B. Sorry, in the B2C segment, that was on the one hand tied to the accounting for our sports rights and sports content rights, but also some other items. All of it is seasonal, there is no sustainable effect to be drawn out of this Q4 development. I would focus on the full year number as a guidance for the future. We also don't have a massive year-over-year effect planned for these items from 2022- 2023. For capitalized costs, yes, you know, we have an increase in capitalized costs because of our in-sourcing of software development, CapEx. That's a development that has gone on for two or three years. It will continue.
Whether this will, you know, lead to a specific increase in capitalized cost next year, I cannot comment on. We do not guide on individual P&L lines. You know, I think you should take into account our guidance on overall OpEx from 2022- 2023 in thinking about these topics.
Is there a World Cup effect in there with the fact that your the leagues, I guess, didn't take place during the World Cup, so some of the rights get pushed into Q1 and Q2 on the sports content side? Sorry.
No.
No.
No, no. Okay, great. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Steve. Next question comes from Andreas Müller, ZKB.
Yes. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two or three. You mentioned you are not going into a fiber nationwide joint venture, can you please give us some color under what circumstances you would go for the proposal of Swiss Fibre Net? What would deter you to collaborate there? If you went for the model, would that go beyond the 500K blocked lines or just on this footprint? That's the first question. The second is, when do you see the Salt contract being readapted? Does it look different from what we know about it? Then maybe the first, well, the third question would be in the B2B business, can you dissect a bit the margin trends for services and for IT solution?
I think, you gave a comment that in IT solution, margins are going up. What's the trend in the two line of business lines? Thanks.
Thank you, Andreas. The first two questions on fiber and the Salt partnership, potential Salt partnership goes to Christoph, and the third question, the B2B, will be taken over by Urs.
On the upgrade of the blocked 500,000 lines. These are lines that Swisscom has constructed without a partner in its own fully 100% paid by Swisscom. We actually don't need any partner or JV to upgrade all those lines. We are basically have already started to retrofit all those lines, and we will continue to retrofit all those lines fully in our own execution. I think that's important to understand because those lines have not been built in a partnership with another company. There is no reason to now to expand this to a JV level. We actually intend to upgrade them on our own.
Whether we can build something with SFN in the future together, we will see. We are discussing with many partners always a potential construction co-construction as most of the time with local utility companies. It always depends on the local situation. You have to analyze basically municipality by municipality to see if a co-construction makes economic or financial sense, and if there is an opportunity to build faster and at lower cost, we will obviously look at it. There are many, let's say, parameters to take into account. Now on the, on the Salt, the Salt side, we are in discussion with Salt to adapt the old fiber contract to a new wholesale contract.
We have agreed all the headline terms, but we are not completely through with the contract, the final contract negotiation, and we will communicate on the contract once it is signed and executed. You can expect the deal to be sort of a regular type wholesale deal because we already have a wholesale deal today with Salt on the existing fiber turf. The contract of the new fiber turf will be quite similar to the one we have in place already, with providing then also, let's say, normal wholesale revenues and not linked anymore to sort of IFRS special accounting treatment as the one we had with the last contract.
Concerning the profitability profile in the IT solutions business, in Switzerland, we definitely are looking forward to further improve it. We are coming out of a mix of portfolio of activities where we especially had some long-lasting old project contracts where we definitely have improved and are still working to improve. Therefore, I truly believe that there is a certain upside. As we know, in the IT solution business and outsourcing business, one big failure in one particular project can, let's say, make a huge difference to whole profitability of the whole overall business. It's also about the maturity and the evolution of our skills and capability, to work on that as an organization.
Yes, our ambitions are way forward to further improve it, and we are convinced that there is some potential, but not, let's say, on a very short-term basis. In our plans towards 2023, there is an evolution included in ramping up our profitability profile, 1 or 2 basis points, for the IT solution business.
Yes. Yours?
The telecom service business in B2B, is that since it's a bit under pressure, would that be kind of a margin drag then?
Let's say, I truly believe in the, in the SME space, I believe we will be capable, let's say, to maintain our profile, our profitability profile, but we still have to work heavily on our e-let's say, cost basis. As I mentioned, we will come into the market with a new, let's say, integrated One B2B portfolio on the telco side, which over time, after migrating the install base to the new portfolio, where we, there we definitely see an upside in the efficiency, and which will not impact very heavily in 2023, but further on, depending on the migration speed and the adaption rate we are able to make.
Okay. Thank you.
Right. Thank you, Andreas Müller. Next question comes from Luigi Minerva, HSBC.
Yes. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody. Thanks, Louis, for taking my questions. The first one is on price indexation, so the changes in the contract terms to include a CPI link. I understand it's an option and not something you will necessarily do. I'm curious to understand, first in Switzerland, what's changed your mind? Because I remember in maybe the last conference call, you defined it as a last resort. At that time, Salt had already done their move. What has changed your mind and leading you to change the contract terms? In parallel, in Italy, I would be keen to hear Alberto's view.
I mean, now we have essentially all the big players, Team Vodafone, changing their contract with the possible indexation in 2024. Do you think this is something that will, you know, change dramatically the price dynamics in the Italian market? Does it have the potential to do that? That's my first question. The second question is on fixed line network strategy, and it's like, you know, the FTTH versus cable debate. You know, there's a consensus, I think, that FTTH is the future-proof solution. How do you see UPC evolving in Switzerland? Do you expect them to become a more and more important wholesale customer of yours?
Or, conversely, will they use more aggressive pricing to retain customers once their network becomes, evidently, less performing than yours? My last question is on the 5G monetization, you know, which is lagging behind everywhere in Europe. I always think of Swisscom as a great innovator, both in terms of services and tariffs. I remember you were the first one to introduce speed tiers in your mobile tariffs. What do you think can be done to improve the 5G monetization, both on services and pricing? Thank you.
Thank you, Luigi, especially for your smart approach by taking the question one into A and B. I think the first one goes to Christoph, and then the second one to Alberto.
On indexation?
Yeah.
On indexation, what we ruled out or what we mentioned as being the last resort at the last call was actually across-the-board price increases. But we mentioned that we are open to or we are actually executing already targeted price increases. Last year, we will do so again this year as Jorg outlined. On the CPI link, I mean, you know, we had inflation last year. We will have some inflation this year. Nobody knows how much. Nobody knows what happens next year. It is more also a question of being prepared in case that inflation continues to be high and sustained. Obviously, at one point, you need to maybe act in a different way. This is our thinking around the price indexation piece.
Yeah. For Italy, we, I wouldn't talk about price indexation. Overall, I would say that the market after years and years of extremely poor profitability is. I'm talking clearly about the fixed. It tries to somehow, you know, to increase overall price because I saw that, you know, you saw that Iliad increased prices. I think that, you know, also some other player are somehow adjusting the prices. For Fastweb, we decided but, you know, not to enter in such a, let's say, price war. We have been always competing not with prices, but with more innovation. I think it's just, I believe that the industry today is becoming more rational.
I would say that overall, we do expect regardless, yes, there is a macroeconomic scenario that is clearly unfavorable, but I think that overall, the industry will look more carefully at profitability going forward, which I think it's correct.
Thank you, Alberto. Second question goes to Christoph, and last question, 5G monetization, I think, goes to Urs because he has a couple of examples.
On, you know, wireline strategy, obviously, we try to monetize our fiber footprint through the wholesale division, and Sunrise UPC is already a wholesale customer of Swisscom and uses some of our fiber lines. I think you'll understand that I cannot comment on the strategy of our competitor, so you would have to ask Sunrise this question. I think at the end, you know, it essentially also depends on the evolution of customer behavior.
How the customer ultimately sees the performance of cable versus fiber, which is probably be more a driver than sort of a proactive strategy of a company. I think at the moment, I cannot say much more than that.
Thank you. Christoph?
I guess the golden bullet around 5G monetization, if you would have it already, finally, we wouldn't let you know yet. For sure, we are working on several, let's say, dimensions as 5G FWA, MPN, Mobile Private Network, monetization. There are also strong elements looking ahead with public spectrum for the industry in Switzerland starting 2024. Unfortunately, we don't have the golden bullet. We are but I can assure that we are still working on it in an intense manner. Hopefully we are the first one which really has the golden bullet, and we will let you know.
Thank you, Urs. Thank you, Luigi.
Thank you.
We're coming to the second last question from Klara, JPMorgan.
Hi, thank you. Actually, most of my questions have been answered, but I just have a follow-up on what you said about the Salt or potential Salt fiber wholesale deal. If I remember correctly, previously, the previous plan had some CapEx benefits. Just wanted to clarify, like does this mean that it's no longer a possibility to, I don't know, less some of the burden on CapEx if you do go into a deal with this new fiber architecture?
The answer is simple. You can throw the previous numbers, you can throw them out. There will be no CapEx benefit, no IFRS 16 financial lease accounting. As Christoph mentioned, the contract is not signed, but the head of terms we have, it will look much more like a normal wholesale deal with wholesale revenues, but no CapEx impact.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you again. Easy question, easy answer. Let's go to the last question coming from Russell, New Street Research.
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, it's Russell from New Street. Saving the best for last, obviously. Three quick ones. On the, on the Salt deal, are you worried about the impact the Salt might have on your retail business? You know, I mean, it only covers a third of the country at the moment, and given that, you know, it's actually built up a reasonable share within region. So yeah, that's my question. I mean, do you think your customer is gonna be the main target or will it target another company's customers, you know, given their kind of profile? Second question is just you talked about copper switch off. I mean, obviously, it's very early days, but have you thought about kind of quantum of savings and the timing of those?
Then the final question. Yeah, just on the. You said there's maybe 10% of the country, I think, that's covered in fiber by other providers. I mean, what's your plan to cover that 10% of the country? You know, will you overbuild that 10%, or will you have to take a wholesale product to offer a fiber product in that region? If so, you know, when would that happen, and when would we see that overbuild happen, or when would we see those wholesale costs rising? Thank you.
Thank you, Russell. I think both questions goes to Christoph.
You know, regarding impact of the Salt agreement, I mean, yes, obviously, we'll have some impact on the retail business. I mean, if a customer, existing customer, switches to Salt, I mean, I assume they will target the whole population base which lives in a municipality. And there will also be some Swisscom customers switching. How big it will be, we will see in the over time. On the other side, you know, I mean, they could also move to other wholesale products we offer at the same today. They could also buy copper services from us. There is no real way of, like, preventing them entering the turf.
They are there, we will see, we have to deal with the fact that there is Salt in the market, we just have to be better in service and quality and brand to retain the customers. On the copper switch off, I would say that, you know, it's a bit early to quantify savings and timing. This is also the reason why we are running those tests with like sort of select municipalities to sort of test a bit more, how can we execute it? How much will it cost us to switch off copper? Let's say upfront, it will essentially mean more costs, actually switching customer to fiber, removing the network and cost savings, I would say.
There will obviously be cost savings, many of them on the electricity side, because the copper platforms are quite intensive on the electricity side. Those energy savings, they will rather come probably more towards the latter part of the decade than in, you know, sort of this year or next year. We will certainly communicate more once we have reliable figures to communicate, but I wouldn't expect anything on this this year. On the remaining or third-party FTTH turf. Ultimately, yes, we plan to cover at least some of that turf. Could be by overbuilding the turf, if we don't find an agreement. Otherwise, we are obviously also talking to some of the actors to actually buy part of the infrastructure in a sort of a co-invest model.
What we are certainly ruling out is a whole buy. We will never rent infrastructure from an existing network builder because we believe that as an infrastructure company, we want to own our own network. Whole buy is excluded. Let's say purchasing half of a network that is already built and moving it into our property, that's obviously something that we are discussing with some of those local actors.
All right. Thank you very much, Russell. Obviously, there's still very last question coming from a phone call. Can you please raise your questions?
Let me try.
Okay. Unmute yourself. Otherwise, we close down the conference. Well, I think at this point it is from our side. In case of any follow-up questions or outstanding questions, please do not hesitate to contact us from the IR team. We are available for you. Thanks for your participation, attention. Have a nice evening. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.