Welcome to BCE Investor Day. The presentation will begin in five minutes. Please take your seats as we will be closing the doors shortly. Please take your seats, set your phones to silent, and refrain from taking photos and video. The presentation is about to begin. Please welcome Curtis Millen, EVP and CFO. Please welcome Curtis Millen.
That's what they call a wartime promotion. Good morning everyone, and welcome to BCE's 2025 Investor Day. My name is Kris Somers , Head of Investor Relations, and it's my pleasure to host you here today. To those of you here in Toronto, thank you for joining us in person. To those of you joining online, welcome.
A warm welcome to you as well. Now before we get started, I do wish to acknowledge that we are joining you today from Toronto, the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. We also acknowledge that Toronto is covered by Treaty 13 of the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today this land remains home to many diverse First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people. Thank you all for being here. We greatly appreciate your interest in BCE, and we look forward to this opportunity to update you on our business, to dive deeper into our long-term strategy, and highlight some of the exciting work being done by our team. We do have a full agenda today, starting with CEO Mirko Bibic, who will set the table and provide an overview of our strategic priorities.
You will also hear from a number o f our senior leaders. Following the presentations, we are going to have a Q& A session with all of today's presenters, so we do ask that you hold your questions until then. The presentations and Q& A are going to run about 3.5 hours, and this does include a s hort break midway through.
Now I'd like to remind everyone that today's presentations will include forward-looking statements regarding our expectations for future performance, markets, and business outlook. These statements are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. We encourage you to review our most recent filings, which identify important risk factors that could affect our future performance.
BCE nor its affiliates undertake any obligation t o update any forward-looking statements except. As required by law. Our Investor Day presentation will be posted to the BCE website at the conclusion of today's event, and that version does contain the end notes and non-GAAP Information referred to on today's slides. With that out of the way, we. Are excited to offer you a window into BCE's strategy, innovation, and plans for the future. Now, to kick things off, let's turn down the lights and set the stage with our opening video.
Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you. Eagles fly at Super Bowls. Yes, Mr. Bell, I can help you with that question.
With that, I'm delighted to kick things off by introducing our CEO Mirko Bibic, who will discuss our vision for the future and how we're positioning BCE for long-term success. Thank you again for joining us, and we hope you enjoy the day.
Good morning. Thank you for being here. I'd like to extend a warm welcome to the investors, analysts, journalists, members of the BCE leadership team, and members of our board who are joining us here today. Timing for this meeting could not be better, given the exciting pace and scale of change happening at Bell and at BCE. When I became CEO just over five years ago in January 2020, none of us could have predicted the extent of change that was coming. COVID-19, supply chain constraints, high inflation, rising interest rates, global tariff wars, reductions in immigration, and ill-advised regulatory decisions all reshaped our operating environment.
On top of that, we saw a massive decline in wireless and Internet prices, even as the prices for almost everything else increased. Throughout this upheaval, we were agile and we were forward-looking. While others retreated, Bell stepped up and we invested in Canada by expanding our fiber network and building a 5G network with incredible speed. Seeing a surge in demand for network capacity, speed, and reliability as Canadians shifted to working and learning from home, we accelerated our capital investment program. At the same time, Bell maintained our long-standing capital markets approach, which was centered on dividend growth. Looking back, I'm proud of many of the things that Bell's accomplished since I took helm of the company: our network expansion, improvements to customer experience, an effective drive for cost efficiencies, market share, growth in fiber, and our digital media strategy powered by Crave. Other elements were more difficult.
Our cost structure, while significantly improved, didn't keep pace with declining prices. Customer experience still has room to improve, and the dividend growth model became a strain on our balance sheet. Today, the world looks so very different than it did in 2020. The Canadian economy is changing, our industry's changing, and technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace. AI, for example, is a generational emerging technology that will redefine how we work, how we live, and how we connect. In response, here at Bell, we've devoted time and effort to reshaping the company, our capital markets approach, and our operating strategy. Today, we're a far more focused company positioned for growth in a new competitive technology landscape. We've diversified revenue streams in higher growth and less regulated domains, and we have an energized management team that's ready to execute, execute, and execute some more.
As we move forward, our execution will be anchored on what we've always done best for 145 years. That's to advance how people connect with each other. The word connection is more important today than ever before. Demand for connectivity is rising at an unprecedented pace, and Bell is better positioned than any of our competitors to meet that growing demand. Today we're going to outline why and why that positions us to grow free cash flow, our unique and differentiated set of assets, our four key strategic priorities, our proven track record of driving efficiencies, strengthening the balance sheet, and optimizing the cost of capital. Our commitment to you is clear: deliver a total shareholder return with a sustainable dividend. What makes Bell better than our competitors? We have a unique and differentiated set of assets, and this is important.
They are all related to our core business, which is connection. We're an iconic and trusted brand. We have the deepest customer relationships. We have the country's largest fiber network and best 5G+ network, and that's been recognized by Ookla and GWS. We're the trusted leader in enterprise solutions, and we've pivoted to respond to changing customer demand. Bell Media, Canada's number one media company, will be a consistent revenue, EBITDA, and free cash flow driver. Our four focus strategic priorities are built on these core differentiators, and they provide material execution upside: put the customer first, deliver the best fiber and wireless networks, lead in enterprise with AI-powered solutions, and build a digital and media content powerhouse. Underpinning all of these is our company-wide transformation and continued drive for efficiencies.
As we execute against these priorities, we expect to deliver Compound Annual Revenue Growth of 2%- 4% over a three-year horizon while continuing to manage the significant declines in legacy businesses. We also have a new goal to drive an additional $750 million in savings for a total of $1.5 billion by 2028. We recognize that the lowest cost providers are best positioned to serve customers in dynamic markets by increasing revenue growth and driving operating efficiencies. We expect to deliver adjusted EBITDA CAGR of 25- 3% from 2025- 2028. We are going to do this while managing continued decline in certain high margin legacy segments. Now, provide a bit more detail about what we're doing to deliver on our priorities. Number one, putting customers first. This is an area where we've historically fallen short as an industry and certainly here at Bell.
We started meaningfully tackling that challenge in 2020 because we knew we were nowhere near good enough. We know that companies that lead in customer experience deliver better financial outcomes. In 2019, we had the highest share of CCTS complaints among the three largest national carriers. Today, we have the lowest. We've made good progress, but we're not there yet. Hadeer will be up shortly. She'll be up this morning, and she'll outline how we're equipping our dedicated team members and our customers with the tools they need for better experiences. Our second priority is to deliver the best fiber and wireless networks. Fiber is the best broadband technology available, bar none. We all know it. Blaik is going to be up right after me, and he's going to show you why. Needless to say, fiber will continue to fuel our growth for years to come.
When we sought out new growth opportunities, we landed on Ziply Fiber, a company whose core business and whose culture aligned with ours. Ziply will be a material growth driver for BCE. With Ziply as part of our portfolio, we can reduce our build costs and increase our fiber penetration across North America. At close, the acquisition increased our fiber footprint significantly, and there is much more on the way. There is also big upside on fiber penetration five years after network deployment. That's after five years of tenure. Bell achieves, on average here, 46% fiber penetration. That means that 46% of locations passed are our customers. Ziply is an earlier tenure mix, and it currently sits at 28% penetration across its operating footprint.
That means that there's huge potential for subscriber growth within Ziply's existing footprint in addition to the new locations we plan to reach through our network build. Looking ahead, we'll plan to reach up to 8 million locations in the U.S. in part thanks to Network Fiber Company, our strategic partnership with PSP Investments. Working together, we'll grow our U.S. footprint at an attractive capital cost and improve our free cash flow profile all at the same time. This approach shows we'll drive growth in a disciplined manner aligned to our capital market strategy. Harold's here today from Seattle. He's the CEO of Ziply Fiber, and he'll have a lot more to share about our U.S. fiber plan. Let's move now to wireless. In 2020, we didn't have a 5G network at all.
Today, our 5G and 5G+ network reaches 89% of Canadians, and we have an important structural spectrum advantage as speeds and capacity demands continue to increase. Importantly, we have the most churn upside in wireless as well. Over the summer, we achieved a major milestone. In collaboration with AST Space Mobile, we completed Canada's first space-based direct to cell 4G voice over LTE call, broadband data transmission, and video stream. This success lays the groundwork for Bell's planned rollout of space-based direct to cell service in 2026, and that's going to extend coverage into Canada's most challenging areas. When commercially available, this technology will enhance public safety, support remote business opportunities, and keep Canadians connected wherever they may be. Our third priority: Lead an enterprise with AI-powered solutions. You'll hear more on our exciting enterprise strategy from John later.
We're already Canada's top enterprise network provider, and our unique offering drives value for enterprise clients well beyond network through ateko, our integrator of AI automation platforms, through BellCyber, our cybersecurity center of excellence, and through Bell AI Fabric. Bell AI Fabric offers full stack AI solutions that allow Canadian companies to develop and control made-in-Canada sovereign AI systems on a scale not otherwise possible. Bell's AI service offering is multi-layered, and it comprises, of course, our leading 5G and fiber networks hardware infrastructure, including Canada's largest sovereign AI data centers, software and large language models including through our partnership with leading Canadian AI company Cohere, and advisory, tech, and professional services through Ateko. The Cohere partnership is a great example of how Bell AI Fabric is at the center of Canada's tech ecosystem.
We were proud to announce our strategic partnership in August when we became Cohere's largest commercial customer, embedding its North Agentic AI platform across Bell and offering its premier LLM to our enterprise customers. Remarkably, nine short weeks later, we launched our first internal use cases. We're executing at startup speed and we're capitalizing on opportunities that are right in front of us. By 2028, our goal is for Ateko, BellCyber, and Bell AI Fabric to be a $1.5 billion AI-powered solutions business. We're almost halfway there. Finally, on media, our ambition is to build that digital media and content powerhouse. Bell Media is growing. In 2020, we saw where the industry was going and we transformed to become a digital media leader. Thanks to that strategic foresight, we are Canada's number one digital media company. We're targeting a 60% digital revenue mix by 2028.
Sean's here as well and he's going to walk you through what's next for Bell Media and how we will continue to deliver Canada's best content on every platform. Earlier I mentioned that these four strategic priorities are underpinned by our company-wide transformation, which enables us to drive efficiencies while continuing to deliver for customers. A few examples: our self-installs are driving net savings and helping customers get connected faster. We'll begin to shut down our 3G network in 2027, building on work already underway in the province of Manitoba. As part of the shutdown, we're offering low-cost LTE and 5G-enabled devices to customers to ease the transition. Like the affordable Ahlo phone by Bell, we're phasing out copper in a smart and balanced way and we'll save costs by upgrading to fiber, reselling salvaged copper, and making the most of our real estate footprint.
Our systems have grown too complex over time as technologies evolved and as we've completed multiple acquisitions. We've been simplifying to provide a smoother customer journey at lower cost. Think one billing system, one ordering platform, and a unified customer profile. Through this process, we will eliminate hundreds of apps that add costs. A word on our capital market strategy: maintain a sustainable dividend policy, continue to deliver, and optimize the cost of capital, including through strategic partnerships between now and 2028. We expect this strategy will drive free cash flow growth after lease payments at a CAGR of approximately 15%. All of this put together—our four strategic priorities, our company-wide transformation, our significant execution upside, and the most talented team in the business—will fuel our goal to provide investors with a total shareholder return that balances growth and a sustainable dividend.
In summary, here's our ambition between now and 2028: compound annual revenue growth of 2%- 4%, an additional $750 million for a total of $1.5 billion of cost savings by 2028, compound annual adjusted EBITDA growth of 2%- 3%, 3.5 x leverage ratio by 2027, approximately 15% free cash flow growth after lease payments, and approximately $5 billion in dividend payments to shareholders through a sustainable and disciplined dividend strategy. We'll do this while managing the structural decline of legacy businesses that remain high margin on a per customer basis but carry significant maintenance and capital costs such as Copper Voice. The key is to position Bell for the future by driving net new revenue at lower capital cost.
One of the best parts of this job is working with the tens of thousands of motivated team members across Bell, including those of my colleagues who you'll meet today. They're here every single day for our customers, every single day. It's truly the best team in the business, all 40,000 of them. Take it from me, Team Bell's ready to seize our material execution upside. It's rooted in what we've always done best, and that's connecting people to each other, connecting businesses to their customers, and connecting all Canadians to the latest technologies. Connection is and has always been, for 145 years, the foundation of this company. Today's the perfect day to introduce our refreshed brand and our new tagline. Connection is everything, and it reflects our corporate strategy. It's relevant, it's approachable, and it is designed to reflect the full breadth of our customer segments.
It's about a promise. It's to create stronger connections every day because connection's at the core of the human experience. Let me show you how it comes to life.
Hey, hey. There you are. I told you they'd be here. So cute. Daddy, don't go yet.
We have a very strong and seasoned leadership team, and today you'll hear from many of them. Blaik will share more on how we're delivering the best fiber and wireless networks. Hadeer, our Chief Information Officer and first ever Chief Customer Experience Officer, will walk you through how we're putting customers first. As I mentioned, Harold's here from Seattle, and he'll outline our U.S. growth strategy. John will detail our plan to lead an enterprise with AI-powered solutions. Sean's going to share our ambition to build that digital media and content powerhouse. Curtis, our CFO and someone you all know well, will provide our financial outlook. We also have our Chief Technology Officer, Mark McDonald, and he'll join us later on the Q&A panel. I'm confident you'll leave here today with a deeper understanding of BCE's strategic direction and our potential.
There's a lot to look forward to today, of course, and well beyond. Thank you for your time this morning.
Please welcome Blaik Kirby, Group President, Consumer and Small Business.
Good morning, everyone. I'm Blaik Kirby and I'm thrilled to be here to share our vision for Bell's Consumer and Small Business group. I've spent over 35 years in the telecom industry, starting as a technician and working my way through network engineering, marketing, sales, and strategy. I've had the privilege of working both wireline and wireless: 20 years in wireline, 15 years in wireless, and 5 years leading both. I've been hands on through every generation of wireless, 2G to 5G, and helped lead the transition from copper to fiber. I also spent a decade in strategy consulting in the U.S., which gave me a broad perspective on how to drive transformation and growth. That journey has given me a deep appreciation for the power of networks and the people who build and deliver them, and it's why I'm so excited about where we're headed.
Our strategy is anchored in a single powerful ambition to deliver Canada's best fiber and wireless networks, creating exceptional value for both our customers and our shareholders. Today, I'll walk you through how we're leveraging this advantage to drive sustainable growth, strong financial performance, and a step change in our operational excellence. Across our Canadian footprint, we have unique unmatched scale, vertically integrated strength, and owner economics. At Bell, we have 3 million fiber Internet customers, 10.5 million wireless subscribers, and 4 million TV content subscribers, a customer base unparalleled in Canada. We also have the best of the best: best networks, best distribution, best brands, and owner economics in content. Bell is one of three carriers globally with overlapping fiber, wireless, and media assets. This unique combination gives us a powerful competitive edge to drive convergence that others can't easily replicate.
Over the next three years, our goal is to drive 1%- 2% CAGR in both Consumer and Small Business revenues and adjusted EBITDA growth that's primarily driven by Internet, wireless, and content. We expect our growth revenues will scale from 70% in 2020 to 85% by 2028, putting us on a strong footing for years to come while we continue to manage the legacy business decline. We're very excited about the years ahead as fiber, 5G, and improved execution accelerate our growth. Our ambition for 2028 is clear and it's built on four key pillars that will guide our execution. First, we will reinforce that fiber and 5G are the absolute heart of our business and our core competitive advantage. Second, I'll demonstrate how our investment in fiber is the engine that drives our performance across both Internet and wireless.
Third, we'll unpack the significant execution upside we have in our operations. Fourth, we'll detail our go-to-market transformation, unlocking further efficiencies and growth. At the core of our investment thesis is that connection is everything, and the fundamental superiority of our fiber and 5G networks will deliver on those needs. This isn't about having the best technology today, it's about owning the essential platform for future innovation, growth, and profitability for the foreseeable future. Content demand and AI growth drive the need for speed and reliability that only fiber and 5G can deliver. We see insatiable appetite for data. Consumers want access to rich content anytime, anywhere, on any device. Business adoption of AI will grow, driving an explosion in compute and data needs. This digital era demands fast, reliable, secure, seamless networks. In short, the world is moving to ultra connectivity.
Only fiber, broadband, and 5G wireless can best meet these customer needs. Our strategy is simple: to deliver superior customer benefits with fiber and 5G. Bell's fiber and 5G deliver unmatched performance. Fiber gives customers the best Internet experience at home, and it delivers the fastest 5G mobile experience through our fiber-backed towers. We offer today up to 8 Gb symmetrical fiber Internet speeds and 5G wireless speeds up to 4 Gb ps . Our new Wi-Fi 7 hubs support up to 19 Gb Wi-Fi throughput in home. Truly next-level connectivity. Fiber is much better than cable. When you compare the technologies head to head, the advantages of fiber are undeniable. We offer faster speeds, dedicated high bandwidth, and symmetrical speeds. From an operational standpoint, our network is more reliable with a lower cost structure. Cable is 7.5 x more expensive on energy and requires 1.8 x more truck rolls.
We are investing in the technology for the next 100 years while our competitors are burdened with a legacy platform that will require a full, costly upgrade to fiber just to catch up. Most importantly, 82% of Canadians recognize fiber as the leading Internet technology. On wireless, we have an important structural advantage as speeds increase 100 fold. Our significant spectrum advantage over our largest competitors with 2 x more mid band spectrum will deliver the fastest and most reliable 5G network. We're positioned to win in the multi gig era. Now for our second pillar. Fiber drives outperformance for both Internet and wireless. It is the key that unlocks market share gains and higher profitability across both Internet and wireless. I'll now show you the tangible metric-driven results of this strategy and the significant growth potential that remains. Our fiber investment creates a powerful growth flywheel.
We have penetration upside as we see penetration more than double from 20%- 46% within five years in new footprints, more than 2 x what we had with copper-based Internet in the same area. Despite any slowdown in new fiber rollout, a growth lever remains with 3 million newly passed homes in the last five years yet to reach 46%. Fiber also yields better economics with cost to connect rates expected to reduce by 23% and cost to serve rates expected to reduce by 12% over the next three years. Fiber customers are happier with higher net promoter scores than non-fiber and dramatically lower churn, around 15% better for fiber versus non-fiber and 25% better for bundled fiber households. When we combine fiber Internet households with wireless and other services, these households have incredibly low churn.
This combination of higher penetration, better economics, and greater loyalty creates a profitable and sustainable growth engine. It's no surprise we are winning share where we have fiber. Our fiber footprint leads in the Canadian market with more than 2 x locations passed versus our next leading competitor. Over time, expect us to deliver 50%+ market share in our fiber footprint and obviously the largest base of fiber Internet households in Canada where we have fiber. We have 39% of households with both mobile and Internet compared to 18% in non-fiber footprint. We expect this to grow to 50% over time. Simple math: get 50% market share where we have fiber and penetrate 50% with mobile, we have higher household revenues and household lifetime values where we have fiber.
We believe we can drive higher product intensity and we plan to increase our product intensity in the next three years by 25%. We expect this increase in subscription services per household will be driven by mobile and Internet cross sell and through the expansion of streaming and content sales directly leveraging our distribution, billing, and household relationships. Higher subscriptions and lower churn will drive much higher cash lifetime value from an average of $6,000 to over $10,000 for a fully penetrated household. The opportunity ahead is exciting. With a base of 2.2 million customers who only take Internet or mobility from us, it represents a significant low-cost cross sell opportunity. Fiber has enabled significant growth as we grew our footprint. Our subscriber growth across fiber, Internet, wireless, TV, and content is forecast to grow from 14 million in 2020 to nearly 20 million by 2028.
While traditional TV is declining, demand for content continues to grow, and we see significant growth in Bell Media direct-to-consumer content bundles. Households with both Internet and mobile are expected to rise from 1.2 million in 2020 to 2.1 million by 2028. We believe this growth and convergence will be driven by fiber Internet penetration and cross sell execution. Moving to our third pillar beyond our network advantage, we have significant upside potential by delivering better experiences, which Hadeer Hassaan will discuss, improving our execution, and furthering our leadership with new products and services that our customers want. We have made churn reduction an area of focus, and we have significant churn upside. Our targets are to reduce both postpaid wireless and converged household churn by 30 basis points by 2028.
We plan to achieve this through focused initiatives driving higher product intensity, using AI-driven models to proactively identify at-risk customers, improving upgrade programs in wireless, and elevating customer service to boost NPS. You have seen material improvements with more to come. This is an upside that others do not have. Customers want fast and reliable Wi-Fi, and Wi-Fi 7 on fiber will be the best Wi-Fi experience they can get. Only fiber will unleash the full potential of Wi-Fi. Our recently launched new GigaHub 2.0 is a game changer, delivering speeds 10 times faster than Wi-Fi 5. Since 85% of smartphone usage happens over Wi-Fi mobility, customers on Bell Internet will experience the first, fastest, and most reliable Internet speeds. Customers want their Internet always on like electricity or water. We are redefining reliability with our Unbreakable Internet proposition.
Unbreakable Internet, launching in spring 2026, combines two key advantages that cable can't replicate. First, our fiber network remains on during power outages, a structural advantage over cable. Second, our GigaHubs include seamless wireless mobile backup using our 5G network enabled by a customer's Bell Mobility smartphone. The combination of passively powered fiber plus mobile backup makes Bell's Internet ultra resilient. Clients get peace of mind that they are connected when they need it most. We believe Unbreakable Internet will be a compelling service benefit to have your mobility and Internet from Bell. Content consumption continues to grow. Customers want flexibility on where and how they watch TV. Increasingly, Bell TV is watched as an app similar to streaming services. Customers don't want dedicated set top boxes anymore.
We are leading the future of TV by eliminating the set top box and delivering a full streaming experience on apps on devices customers already own. This app-based approach is uniquely flexible and customer focused, meeting customers where they are on Apple TV, Google TV, Samsung, LG, and other leading TV brands. From a business perspective, this model is highly scalable, cost efficient, and simplifies the customer experience, giving us another structural advantage over cable's closed set top box-centric business model. Putting all these things together gives us product intensity upside. We plan to do this by bundling Crave with our TSN and RDS streaming services and with partners like Disney and Netflix. We will further expand by integrating high value third party services for AI, gaming, and security. Customers benefit with bundle discounts and the convenience of one bill and can sign up in any channel.
We then benefit from additional Crave and TSN penetration and lower overall household churn. Our owner economics, scale, and strength enabled through Bell Media provides a platform for growth that no competitor can replicate. Finally, our fourth pillar is the continuing transformation of our go-to-market to become simpler, more agile, and more efficient. Canada is a small market with too many brands. We will be streamlining our brand portfolio to be similar to other mature telecom markets where most operate with one main converged brand. Going forward, Bell will be our only brand for superior mobile and Internet and content bundling and driving product intensity. In January, we will be stopped selling Virgin Internet in Ontario. We anticipate substantial operational savings from realigning our brands, higher product intensity, and lower churn. We also see an opportunity by simplifying our offers and connectivity value proposition.
We already have unlimited Internet plans and drive a 70%+ mix on Gb+ feeds for wireless. Similar to the U.S., we will differentiate mobility rate plan tiers based on class of service, content, and handset financing. Recently, we launched our tiered plan construct, which we believe will be accretive to ARPU. We have the best distribution network in Canada with over 4,200 exclusive and semi-exclusive retail locations, giving us unmatched market reach. With over three times more exclusive and semi-exclusive locations than our competitors, we have a significant advantage. We also see a major opportunity to improve our cost structure by shifting more transactions to digital channels. Our goal is to more than double our digital mix by 2028, leading to significant cost savings and a better customer experience.
The combination of top-tier exclusive distribution and scaled-up digital gives us the best of both worlds to drive sales leadership and also delivers an expected $180 million of cash savings over three years. Regarding the implications of the recent Internet access decision, our approach is twofold. First, protect Bell's retail position in the east, executing on the integrated strategy I described today. Ultimately, we believe fiber resellers will on balance take more share from cable, driving higher fiber penetration for us in the east as is typically seen when this happens, and two, our focus in the west will be to protect our mobility base by offering more services in a disciplined way. We will offer these wireless customers no set-top box Fibe TV and/or streaming content bundles to grow wireless sales and lower churn, and where necessary for the highest value customers, we will resell fiber Internet.
Being more competitive in the west will significantly improve customer consideration of Bell, particularly for wireless. We will be launching fiber Internet in B.C. and Alberta in November with a strong focus on cross-sell and mobility and Internet content bundling nationally. We expect this to translate to continued strong retail market share and overall better network penetration in the East and gains in wireless performance in the West. To conclude, a word on our financial ambitions: by executing on our four pillars and delivering the best connectivity for consumers with our superior 5G and fiber networks, we expect to deliver steady financial growth and strengthen our market leadership in consumer and SMB. We believe this strategy will drive growth in subscribers, revenue, and cash flow while enhancing profitability.
Our financial ambition is to achieve 1%- 2% CAGR in consumer and small business revenues over the next three years, driven primarily by 4%- 5% CAGR in our growth services. We also expect 1%- 2% CAGR in adjusted EBITDA over the same period. I'm excited about Bell's leadership on two fronts. First, the combined power of our pure fiber and 5G networks is delivering faster speeds, better reliability, and lower latency, exactly what Canadians need in this era of AI and streaming. Second, as we move beyond traditional TV, we're leveraging our ownership of Crave with partnerships with top platforms to offer flexible, affordable streaming options that deliver the content people want when and where they want it. Our leadership in these two areas will position Bell to better serve our customers while creating long-term value. Thank you.
Please welcome Hadeer Hassaan, EVP Chief Information and Customer Experience Officer.
Hi everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today to share with you how we are transforming customer experience, a critical part of our business. I'm the first named Chief Customer Experience Officer in Canadian telecom. I'm also the Chief Information Officer. This dual role is by design. It gives me a unique opportunity to align strategy, execution, and outcomes. It's about orchestrating people and technology to create simple, seamless, and intuitive customer experiences. Mirko and Blaik spoke about Bell's world-class networks and our differentiated assets. What is really important is how our customers experience those assets every single day. I want to start by acknowledging that telecommunication companies can do better in customer service and we are no exception. At Bell, we've prided ourselves on delivering a superior network.
Our internal complexity, built up over years of legacy systems and multiple acquisitions, has made it harder for customers to do business with us. That is changing. Today I will share how we are making customer experience a competitive advantage for Bell. I'll start with why customer experience matters, our ambition to truly redefine customer engagement, the solid foundation we've already built, how we'll deliver on our ambition through people, AI, and our technology platforms, and finally, the upside ahead. Delivering a positive customer experience matters. Companies that lead in customer experience consistently deliver superior financial outcomes. The difference is striking. A Bain study shows that over a 10-year period, NPS leaders achieved over 3x higher total shareholder value, nearly double the revenue growth, and 5x growth in operating income.
Investing in customer experience creates internal team engagement, strengthens customer relationships, drives loyalty and repeat business, and fuels profitability. It's a core driver of shareholder value. At Bell, we have over 240 million direct interactions every year. That reach gives us something incredibly powerful. We know our customers and we have a real-time pulse on our business. Each of those moments is a chance to delight our customers, make it easier to do business with us, and deliver hyper-personalized experiences, which means services and experiences that truly match our customers' needs. Like higher speed Internet that matches your utilization or an ultra plan for the frequent traveler or the right content bundle. Here's what's equally important. Easy, friction-free experiences also cost less to deliver. Every great interaction doesn't just build loyalty, it drives efficiency at the heart of our ambition, a customer-first commitment.
A set of principles that we apply to every interaction with the objective to make it easier for customers to do business with Bell. It's anchored in four guiding promises: faster interactions without friction, from sales to appointments, billing or upgrades. We follow through every journey, from onboarding to troubleshooting, so it is simple and seamless and customers get a consistent, connected experience online, in store, or over the phone. Our vision for 2028 is ambitious and it's grounded in people powered by data and disciplined delivery, something we do very well. At Bell, we'll design experiences that leverage technology to enable our teams and customers. The outcome is clear: more engaged employees, happier customers with a higher lifetime value, and lower cost to serve. Customer experience isn't a marketing slogan. We will deliver measurable business outcomes.
As Blaik shared, we are focused on higher NPS and lower churn across the base. We are targeting 25% higher product intensity leading to a higher lifetime value, all while unlocking over $100 million in operational cost efficiencies per year. Accomplishing these targets starts with happy customers. Since 2020, we've made bold moves to fundamentally reshape our organization. Through our laser focus on customer experience, we've delivered measurable, meaningful improvements. In 2019, Bell had the highest share of CCTS complaints in the industry. Since then, we've reduced complaints per 10,000 subs by more than half. Today, Bell has the lowest complaint rate among the three largest national carriers through disciplined execution and unwavering commitment to put the customers first. In addition, we prioritize delivering the best possible self-serve digital experience for customers. It's easy, fast, and convenient.
We introduced Self-i nstall, a program that lets customers set up their services in less than 15 minutes, no technician required. Customers prefer its convenience and it's generating significant net sales savings. We designed a self-serve app that our customers love. The MyBell app has received more than 50 industry recognitions since 2022, and we've transformed our billing experience with a personalized interactive e-bill, making it easier for customers to understand their charges at a glance. By beginning our AI journey well ahead of the curve, we've cultivated a powerful dual advantage: a foundation of high-quality structured data and an expert team that thinks AI first, the two core enablers for AI success. Today, AI is changing how we serve customers and improving agent effectiveness, already leading to measurable results. Our AI-powered Virtual Repair is a tool developed in-house in 2022.
It has already eliminated over a million technical support calls. With our virtual assistant, we can better understand customer intent, provide answers quickly, direct them to self-serve, or find them the right agent. It's not an out-of-the-box chatbot. Rather, our virtual assistant is at the forefront of global deployment, and it works. AIOps for network monitoring detects 99% of site incidents in under 15 minutes and speeds root cause analysis by 80%. It leads to fewer outages, faster fixes, and happier customers. We've come a long way in self-install, in digital channel share, in call and chat propensity, and we're just getting started. I'm even more excited about what's next. Our foundation is strong, and now we get to accelerate. Let me show you a glimpse of the future and what we have in store for our customers. I would like to introduce you to Isabelle.
At Bell, we have a customer-first philosophy. Introducing Isabel, a busy mom with a dynamic household. She has two kids, and both Isabel and her fiancé work from home. Bell's network powers their lives for work, school, and to manage the household. They rely on Bell's services to stay connected, productive, and entertained. Each month, Isabel uses the MyBell Mobile app to stay on top of her household bill. When she notices a charge she doesn't recognize, she turns to Bell's voice virtual assistant for support.
I can help with that. The $6.99 charge on your bill is for an on demand movie rental. Dino Train 2 ordered on Jax TV on July 10th. Thank you. You're welcome. Since your family enjoys movie nights like Dino Train 2, would you like to try Crave with a free two months trial, no commitment, cancel anytime. Let's try it. From answering questions and tech troubleshooting to offering personalized products and services, our AI-enabled virtual assistant can smoothly handle up to 90% of customer needs, and for more complex or sensitive issues, our system seamlessly transitions to AI-enabled workflows managed by human agents. Powered by ServiceNow's Customer Promise Engine, this ensures fast, effective resolution and empowers agents to deliver on our promises to every customer. Today, Isabel is browsing the Bell Shop page for deals.
She is greeted by Bell's Virtual Assistant, which instantly recognizes she's browsing for Internet plans and offers a personalized recommendation, faster speeds, and better performance tailored to her family's growing online needs. When Isabel wants to take some time to make the decision, the Virtual Assistant makes it easy, scheduling a callback at her convenience. The appointment is confirmed and can be managed anytime through the MyBell app, while the plan details are sent directly to her inbox for easy reference. In the meantime, if Isabel needs to adjust her plans, she can manage her appointment through the MyBell app. The day after, at the scheduled callback time, the agent calls the customer. Behind the scenes, the agent is supported by Bell's advanced data and AI capabilities that power our operations.
Our Agent Assist, powered by advanced AI/ML, equips agents with everything they need to deliver next level service, from a real-time summary of the Promise Engine to past interaction notes, suggested next best actions with knowledge articles, and even live coaching tips to guide every conversation. The agent then speaks with Isabel and fulfills the request. A tile appears on the MyBell app confirming the new plan after the call. Our proprietary AI coaching tool shares the agent's Quality Score, which evaluates tone, empathy, critical thinking, and more. It offers constructive feedback and can recommend personalized training. Isabel's journey is just one of millions of customer interactions each year that are evolving exponentially with AI, allowing us to deliver highly personalized experiences and making it easier to do business with Bell.
Our transformation strategy is simple. First, we empower our teams with AI superpowers. This means giving our dedicated people the tools they need to focus on what matters most, delivering an exceptional customer experience. For example, when a customer calls, our agent screen is instantly populated with real-time insights and AI-driven diagnostics. They can skip the basic questions and get right into providing a solution, turning a long call into quick, effective resolution that adds value to our customers. Second, we personalize the experience, focusing on what matters most to each customer and adds real value. Third, for customers who want immediate answers, we provide powerful 24/7 self-serve options across any channel, giving them complete control and convenience. To make this vision a reality, we are combining data, AI, and the right strategic partnerships with global leaders like Google, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Cohere, allowing us to move faster, innovate smarter, and leapfrog traditional approaches. In addition, our approach is different.
Many companies focus on individual use cases, find one area like chat or a billing use case, and make it better. With AI, this is a start, but for this to scale you would need to develop a million individual use cases. It's slow and results are limited. We are building technology services as platforms with embedded AI at the core. Every customer touchpoint benefits from AI natively, not as a bolt-on. Instead of launching a small project every time we want to add intelligence, our teams can now configure new capabilities in just a few clicks. AI is part of the fabric of how we operate. The result? Immediate, scalable impact across millions of interactions. Most importantly, happy customers with seamless experiences. Our mission-focused platforms will make a real difference for our customers and for Bell. Let me give you a few examples.
Our Bell virtual assistant will allow us to serve customers 24/7 in their language of choice. This is an ongoing Lighthouse project with Google with many world-first releases. I'll share with you a demo at the end to show some of its potential in action. With agentic AI, customers will be able to manage their services across voice, chat, web, and app seamlessly. What's more, the same AI agents will be available to our frontline teams to make their job easier and enable a better, more informed experience to our customers. We build once and deliver value everywhere with minimal incremental cost. We are developing a Promise Engine with ServiceNow and in partnership with Bell's very own Ateko to help solve complex service scenarios previously managed across multiple legacy systems.
For instance, a technician runs into a safety issue during an installation, like a tree needs to be trimmed before continuing the work. We've historically struggled to keep customers informed of the status. With ServiceNow Promise Engine, we identify every commitment made to verify it and, critically, keep the customer updated throughout until the promise is fulfilled. The result? Informed, happy customers. In partnership with Salesforce, our Customer Journey platform bridges marketing, ordering, and service, all linked into a dynamic AI-powered conversation tailored to each customer's needs. The result? Added customer value, timely communication throughout the customer journey. Happy customers. Our targets are clear: to turn every interaction into measurable positive impact for customers and for Bell to achieve higher NPS and lower churn, higher product intensity, higher lifetime value, over $100 million of operational savings. Most importantly, happy customers that value their Bell experience.
Thank you for your time today. I am incredibly excited about the opportunity to empower our customers through exceptional experiences. Our telecommunications solutions are more than just services. They enable people to make the connections that matter. I will leave you now with Natalie Cattanach . Nathalie is the VP of Strategy and Shared Services. She will give you a closer look at our Bell Virtual Assistant Next Gen AI technology that enables us to better support customers in their channel of choice. Welcome, Natalie.
Thanks, Hadeer. Our virtual assistant is transforming customer experience by enabling conversational self-serve support 24/7. We've already deployed core VA functionality across our chat ecosystem and now we're extending this experience to our voice queues. Lucky Mobile rollout is complete. Virgin is underway and Bell will follow later this month. This AI-powered platform immediately replaces our legacy IVR.
More than that, it serves as the technological foundation for next gen customer service. From here, we'll continue to innovate, optimizing the experience and scaling new use cases to maximize ongoing business value. Today, I'm excited to showcase our VA experience. The functionalities we'll discuss are either in production or are included in our 2026-2027 program roadmap. In our first scenario, RVA leverages generative AI to answer customer inquiries and find a solution that meets their needs. Let's get started.
Hi there.
Hi, I'm Bell's virtual assistant. I use artificial intelligence to learn. How can I help you today?
I just received my bill, and it's higher than what I usually pay. Can you please explain why?
I can h elp you with that. To authenticate, can you please click on the link to log into MyBell?
Okay, done.
Thank you. I took a look at your current. Invoice and it is $20 higher than. Last month, due to roaming charges, you i ncurred on September 4- September 8 in Mexico. I hope you had a great time there.
Oh right, I forgot. I used my phone while I was traveling. Yes, Mexico was great.
I'm glad to hear that. Do you travel to Mexico often? You are eligible to upgrade to the Ultra Canada and international plan for $10 more per month. This plan includes unlimited data, calling, and t exting in Canada and internationally.
That sounds interesting. I'm visiting my family in Mexico next week. Can I upgrade the other line on my account to that offer too? My husband also travels a lot.
This is a special offer for your line. Let me see what I can do. Do you mind if I put you o n a brief hold?
Sure, no problem.
Okay. I have sent the request to my manager. Please wait a moment while I get their response.
In this scenario, the VA consults a human agent for approval to apply the targeted offer on both lines of the account. Let's go behind the scenes to demonstrate what that looks like. First, the VA initiates a chat outlining the situation and providing rationale to justify its recommendation. The live agent then reviews this information and provides direction. In this case, the VA highlights the customer's long standing loyalty, and the agent aligns to upgrade both lines of the account to the Ultra Canada International plan.
All right. I spoke to my manager and given y our loyalty, I am able to upgrade both lines on the account. Would you like to proceed with these changes?
Thanks, I appreciate that. Yes, please add it to my account.
Okay, great. I've added it to your account. You will receive a confirmation email with a ll the plan details.
Thanks t hat was pretty easy.
That's great to hear. Thanks for choosing Bell and enjoy your t rip to Mexico next week.
As you can see from the first example, RVA supports customers with inquiries and will even call upon live agents for second level support. However, it will do much more than that. In our second example, we showcase how the VA leverages existing digital tools, in this case virtual repair, to troubleshoot technical issues and get our customers back up and running fast. Let's give it a try. Hi there.
Hi, I'm Bell's virtual assistant. I use artificial intelligence to learn. What can I help you with today?
My Internet is not working, and I have virtual meetings all day.
I'm sorry to hear that. To access your account, I need to authenticate you. I will be sending a one-time. PIN to your phone. Please read back the code when you receive it. A one-time PIN has been sent to your phone.
It's 350920.
Thank you. I've checked for outages in your area, but there are none. However, there is an active weather alert. Let's initiate our virtual repair process. I am going to run remote diagnostics on your service.
Thank you.
Okay. I can see that the signal is not flowing to your modem. There appears to be an issue. Your physical wire, which may be weather related. I will need to deploy a technician. I have someone available at 1:00 P.M. this afternoon i f that works for you?
I can make that work. I really need service.
Okay. I've scheduled your appointment for 1:00 P.M. this afternoon. You'll see these details in the Manage Your Appointment section in MyBell Mobile. In the meantime, you can use wireless Internet backup to stay connected and attend your virtual meetings. I am sending instructions to your phone now.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you for calling and enjoy the r est of your day.
As you can see, our VA enables us to better support customers in their channel of choice. Both of the scenarios reviewed today will be available to customers in voice and in chat. This is just the beginning. Through ongoing innovation, we will continue to improve customer experience and make it easy to do business with Bell. Thank you.
Please welcome Harold Zeitz, CEO, Ziply Fiber.
Greetings from Seattle. I'm Harold Zeitz, CEO of Ziply Fiber. I'm pleased to be here today to discuss Ziply Fiber and BCE's U.S. strategy for the coming years and how they directly align with Bell's priorities to deliver the best fiber network with a great customer experience. As you know, I co-founded Ziply Fiber and I'm new to the BCE team. I began my career after business school at AT&T and led the fiber and network design teams responsible for converting the western 13 states to fiber. I spent 10 years after that at McCaw Cellular, which became AT&T Wireless, where I ran markets across the country and then led marketing for the whole company. I spent the next decade leading technology companies delivering high transaction consumer services before I returned to telecom for the most recent dozen years. My roots in fiber and telecom are deep.
The entire Ziply Fiber team is excited to join the BCE family. BCE is enabling Ziply Fiber to accelerate and expand our ambition to bring fiber service and a refreshingly great experience to more people and businesses and at a faster pace than we could on our own. The opportunity in the U.S. is quite significant because nearly half of homes do not yet have fiber. I'll start with a bit of history on how we got here prior to the acquisition by BCE. First, we assembled a team of experienced people, many of whom we knew from prior work. We needed the expertise to turn a struggling telco we purchased into a leading fiber company. We remade the network, nearly tripled fiber locations, and radically improved the customer experience.
Importantly, we also simplified and modernized our back office and network systems, giving us the ability and platform to scale efficiently. Three strategies drove our progress and largely the same strategies will drive the delivery of our 2028 ambition, now as part of BCE. From the beginning, we architected and planned to operate the best and fastest network. It's the foundation for everything we do, and we designed our commercial-grade, purpose-built for IP network to be redundant, scalable, reliable, and low cost to operate. We focus everything we do around delivering a refreshingly great customer experience. This is at the core of every decision we make and the first thing we talk about with our team members every day. We've planned to bring fiber to more places, and now we can go further and build faster with BCE and the formation of Network Fiber Company. The partnership with PSP Investments.
As I mentioned, our first strategy is to operate the best and fastest network in the U.S. A few key things to note that differentiate us from others. We offer speeds of up to 50 Gbps at every residential location, which is the fastest in America. We architected the network in such a way to provision in such a way that everyone gets the speed they pay for at all times. We operate the network capacity at over eight times the need based on average peak utilization, so there's never congestion. Physical fiber cuts get rerouted automatically, and the other side of the ring can more than handle the incremental traffic. The network is a 400 Gbps optical network, which is architected for scalability and expansion. The design also gives us full control over quality of service.
We were intentional in the network design to ensure we were providing customers with a refreshingly great experience. Both consumers and businesses continue to increase their demand for bandwidth, and no matter how much they need, they just want their data connection to work always. Our second strategy is to deliver a refreshingly great experience in everything we do. Every improvement we make, every system change, every department is driven by this because we believe that nobody really wants to have to contact us. In other words, the best service is no service, which is our way of saying customers should never have a need to contact us. There are three key elements to delivering on this strategy. In a world where customer expectations are driven by immediacy, we're moving toward the ability to install fiber the same day at all locations.
Currently, all addresses are eligible for same day repair, and approximately 75% of fiber addresses are eligible for same day install. We continue to increase that through our build and other methodologies. We continue to make IT enhancements to automate daily capacity adjustments to maximize both service and installation within the same day. We find ways to modify construction such that even more installs could be done on the same day. We live in a world that expects service today. We aim to deliver just that. We also believe simple wins, and we apply that concept to all of our tools and customer interactions to drive customer satisfaction. When we make it easy for customers and easy for our team to serve customers, everybody wins. We've made it easy to shop and buy. We continue to automate and improve our customer communications across the full Ziply Fiber experience.
We've added more self-serve capabilities to our app, all of which have driven significant gains in NPS. We still think there's more room to grow. The lens principle that helps drive a refreshing and great experience is a philosophy of where there's a way, there's a better way. For example, we've developed a single platform that can deliver the same capability to customers, care agents, sales reps, and field operations, which makes it easier to keep enhancing experiences and faster to roll them out. Fundamentally, we're always trying to get better every day. The result of these efforts is that while our customer base continues to grow, our customer contacts are decreasing to some of the lowest in the U.S. market. In the end, we have the belief that the best service is no service.
As much as possible, we'd like our customers never to have a need to contact us. Lastly, we plan to accelerate and expand our fiber build to get to about 8 million locations. Over time, BCE and the PSP Investments partnership have given us a big advantage to be able to expand beyond our original acquired footprint and to begin to build faster. We know PSP Investments well. They were shareholders in Ziply Fiber via their private equity team, and we are excited that they continue to be engaged in the Ziply Fiber growth story, this time through their infrastructure team. We will now leverage PSP Investments and BCE Capital as well as Bell's existing network, and we can leverage our collective U.S. routes, which extend beyond the current Ziply Fiber four-state footprint for growth and more efficient builds.
Network Fiber Company will enable us to accelerate our fiber build and expand our geographic reach. We will ramp up construction over time over the next several years and continue ramping beyond 2028 because the market is dynamic. We've identified more than two times the locations we intend to build, and we plan to build as First Fiber. Lastly, we're evaluating what I like to call launch pad opportunities, which are small fiber ISPs that could accelerate our expansion in a particular region. All new routes will also offer growth opportunities for our commercial business. We have the right strategy, the right team, and a generational opportunity to deliver long-term growth. Currently, we have about 1.4 million fiber passings. Our ambition is to more than double our fiber passings to about 3 million by the end of 2028.
We continue to see rapid fiber penetration with customer additions as we turn on fiber with about 25% penetration in just the first year and increasing penetration rates as cohorts mature. We have a number of unique assets that give me confidence in our ability to achieve the U.S. Fiber growth plan. It starts with our team. We believe happy employees make happy customers. Our team is motivated and excited by our new accelerated and expanded mission with BCE and the PSP Investments Partnership. We have a great network that's proven and has the ability to expand and scale once we build it. Ziply Fiber distribution and installation teams have a proven track record of delivering strong penetration. With this team, we will continue to find better ways to simply deliver a refreshingly great experience for customers.
By executing on our strategies of Best Network, refreshing your great experiences, and accelerating and expanding the Fiber Build, we expect to deliver significant revenue and EBITDA growth as part of our 2028 financial ambition. Over the next three years, we anticipate Ziply Fiber's revenue to grow at a CAGR of 15%- 20% with an EBITDA increasing at a CAGR of 14%- 18%. We are excited about our new mission to accelerate the Fiber build in our four current states and expand the reach across the U.S., delivering the fastest and most reliable network to about 8 million people and businesses, providing a refreshingly great experience to customers. With the combined strength of BCE and the PSP Investments Partnership backing us, the Ziply team can now focus even more on executing our plan supported by a streamlined financial structure and enhanced funding. Thank you.
At this point, we are going to be taking a 20-minute break, so please take the opportunity to stretch and enjoy some refreshments. We'll see you back in the room and online in 20 minutes for the next segment of our program. Thank you.
The BCE Investor Day presentation will resume in five minutes. Please make your way back to the SOCO Ballroom. The BCE Investor Day presentation will resume in one minute. Please take your seats.
Welcome back, everyone. I hope you enjoyed the break. For those of you just rejoining online. Thank you for being with us. Now let's continue with our program. I am pleased to introduce John Watson, Group President, Bell Business Markets, AI Fabric, and Ateko. Welcome, John, to the stage.
I'm really pleased to have the opportunity to share Bell's Enterprise AI strategy. Over the last 25 years as an Executive Officer, I've experienced a success from leveraging powerful secular growth within our industry. I became the head of Bell Business Markets about two and a half years ago, and we redefined the business, going back to my startup roots and creating a dynamic enterprise flywheel of sustainable growth by tapping into strong secular opportunities. This has been a consistent pattern for Bell over the last 145 years. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to share our story with you today. How Bell will Lead in Enterprise AI Powered Solutions: we're building on strength underpinned by the best B2B networks and unrivaled customer trust. We're growing adjacent to our core in high growth categories to create meaningful, differentiated services that positively impact our customers.
Businesses by fully leveraging the power of the best AI capabilities within Bell and for customers is a powerful flywheel of differentiated growth based on technical skills, platform expertise, and strategic investments. Our communications business is a large, profitable foundation to build on. We're the market leader across all categories. We're investing in the core services and service delivery. Our primary growth engine is AI-powered solutions where our ambition is to double revenues by 2028. BellCyber, Ateko, and AI Fabric are successful businesses led by innovative founders and entrepreneurs. By focusing on these high growth areas, we're significantly expanding our market for end-to-end AI solutions, reinforcing and growing customer relationships. Legacy enterprise service offerings have been declining here in Canada and everywhere as they're phased out and replaced with powerful new technology. New technology substitution, when combined with regulatory decisions, has caused low single-digit revenue and margin pressures.
Bell's enterprise strategy for the last 10 years is not our strategy for the future. What sets us apart now is how we're pivoting from these traditional services to our next chapter of growth. We see tremendous opportunity to leverage our leading Bell Business Markets platform to bring differentiated and integrated solutions to our customers. We're focusing on a small number of high growth sectors adjacent to our core, specifically in fiber and wireless. As you can see, these growth categories are projected to represent 65% of our revenue by 2028. We see that number as a floor versus a ceiling as we become the leader in these new trust. We're the enterprise leader because customers trust Bell to manage their critical infrastructure, manage connectivity, manage security, manage AI platforms. Their entire business relies on Bell. We have a bold, differentiated strategy for growth.
We've successfully executed three major brand launches in March, May, and September introducing our new AI-powered solutions. Our strategy has four tightly integrated pillars. Number one, reinventing our core services and service delivery. Number two, becoming the number one cybersecurity provider in Canada. Number three, building A teko into the leading service integrator of AI automation platforms. Number four, extending Bell AI Fabric's leadership. Our timing's perfect. Sovereign platforms and AI will significantly accelerate our strategy. There are areas where Bell is a Canadian leader. It's powerful because it leverages our core platform strengths to maximize the potential market for our full stack AI solutions. Canadian-built, Canadian-run, on the best networks built for the world. I love this slide. We've created a powerful and unique group of technology businesses to deliver more for customers. We've brought together amazing Canadian tech founders onto our team.
All have chosen to stay with us because they believe the time is now to create a Canadian communications and tech services champion. With Bell as the trusted platform, we're also bringing together the best Canadian technology champions, Cohere, Vector, and Mila, to join forces and build a Canadian leading technology champion ecosystem. This collaboration extends across the entire stack, integrating our superior services from Ateko, AI Fabric, and BellCyber with other Canadian leaders like ThinkOn, Digital Research Alliance, Sanctuary AI, and SDK. There's always been a vibrant Canadian landscape of tech founders, but they disappear into the machinery of large international organizations. Bell provides the platform to combine and supercharge what they do with like-minded teams and innovate right here. This is a network of amazing and creative AI tech companies and we're just getting started. Platform focus and vertical specialization are hallmarks of our strategy.
We'll focus on a select number of areas we'll execute really well. Bell is the largest combined telco and Ateko team to work across platforms and deliver differentiated AI solutions. It's particularly important in complex sectors like financial services, utilities, and government where leading technical capabilities are essential for success. I'm now going to unpack the four pillars of our enterprise AI solutions I shared with you earlier. First pillar: reinventing core services and service delivery. As a leader in enterprise connectivity, we have an excellent opportunity to automate process within Bell and for customers, leveraging best-in-class platforms, AI, and Ateko's IP to deliver differentiated, secure services with observability. We'll deliver significant quality and efficiency gains as well as time-to-market delivery for new services. Our second area of focus, Bell On Demand Network, fundamentally redefines how customers consume connectivity.
Customers access network capabilities via a unified and intuitive self-serve digital interface. Third focus area: Unified Communications. We're the leader and are delivering the complete suite of innovative and powerful offerings, leveraging the best technology partners. The portfolio of solutions enables early AI adoption for a number of customers. Our deep technical bench knowledge is critical, along with the largest technical team to implement and manage the solutions. Fourth area of focus: Contact Center as a Service and Contact Center AI are two very high-growth areas for Bell as both a strategic operator and for Ateko, which enables these capabilities for customers. Bell has secured some of the largest contracts and is currently deploying these advanced technologies successfully at scale, leveraging the full market suite of platforms. This is really important.
Many companies are struggling with the adoption of AI and the delivery of meaningful benefits for our government enterprise customers. Modern contact center platforms and technology are one of the primary pathways to leveraging AI in a meaningful way, more personalized experiences, and efficient operations. Over the last three years, we've built expertise as the lighthouse customer and are sharing what we've learned to help customers do the same. Fifth area of focus: Mobility Innovations, the essential backbone of the modern enterprise. This is about empowering our customers' most valuable asset, their people. In today's hybrid work environment, providing secure, reliable, and seamless connectivity to every employee no matter where they are is mission critical. We're the market leader in this space, providing not just Canada's best network, but also the crucial layers of device management and security that enterprises demand.
Our growth is fueled by rapid innovation and we're excited about private Network Innovations, advanced 5G capabilities such as 5G slicing, cybersecurity, the second pillar of our enterprise AI-powered solutions, our advantage, scale, and more threat intelligence data to power our advanced AI cyber solutions. Cybersecurity is a core focus and key area of strategic investment. This is a large, fast-growing market that creates immediate cross-sell and upsell potential across telco, cloud, and managed services. BellCyber is unifying cybersecurity across the Bell ecosystem, delivering a one-stop, end-to-end security platform for network, cloud, and endpoint. We're building a sovereign Canadian-controlled AI threat intelligence capability and this is essential for securing our nation's critical infrastructure and helping public and private sectors reduce dependency on foreign feeds and risks. Now moving on to the third pillar of our enterprise AI-powered solutions.
We recently united four of our startups under an exciting new brand called Ateko. Founded in March 2025 in Montreal, 145 years after Bell was incorporated in the same great city known for AI innovation. We're creating the leading Canadian service integrator for AI automation platforms. Ateko is a Made in Canada success story specializing in helping enterprise customers maximize the value they get from five global leading AI platforms. Leveraging Bell Business Markets' scale and relationships, Ateko builds on our existing master service agreements and service delivery models. Ateko implements solutions in the most attractive, highest growth software and cloud segments. It's highly accretive to the traditional Bell Business Markets portfolio and deep into the heart of our customers' operations and workflows. We own the solution end to end, deliver unique outcomes powered by AI, and we accelerate time to value with our technical expertise in vertical specialization.
Leveraging Bell's platform supports exceptional growth. Focus is the key. We have capabilities across five growth areas: ServiceNow, Salesforce, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. In these specialties, we have the largest Canadian team in areas with more than 1,700 coveted technical certifications. Ateko is uniquely positioned to be the leading service integrator for AI automation platforms with sovereign requirements. The financial sector is a key vertical for Ateko, with major customer project expansion initiatives underway with several of Canada's leading financial institutions. Ateko had proven their ability to deliver over many years, but now, with the backing of Bell, they're able to exponentially increase the scale and scope of services and revenues. For example, in one key engagement, a major institution entrusted us in September to fully outsource their ServiceNow operations. This level of trust is a direct result of the comprehensive proposals which often go far beyond competitors.
By integrating unique assets from across the Bell ecosystem, including Bell Media, to act as a powerful value multiplier for another financial institution, we modernize the IT operations by leveraging ServiceNow's automation and AI capabilities. This transformation is now extending to retail banking operations, significantly enhancing both productivity and customer experience. I'd like to share with you a great example of how Bell is really well positioned to leverage the two leading enterprise software platforms within focused verticals. As the leading service integrator for AI automation platforms, we work with our platform partners, in this case ServiceNow, to build differentiated solutions. Bell has one of the largest field services teams in North America and we needed to upgrade our platform to an AI-centric field solution.
We secured the support of Bill McDermott, ServiceNow's CEO, to invest in capabilities that will enhance his platform to service the largest and most complex customers. This was done in conjunction with Bell's field team executives who also helped sell this to other large companies. Ateko does the work to implement the platform capabilities within Bell and they're the first to help customers to do the same. Ateko sells the full stack of AI services to the world. This creates exceptional opportunities due to the leading differentiated solutions that drive incremental internal financial benefits and higher margin external revenues. For Ateko, it's a win, win, win. The fourth pillar of our enterprise AI-powered solutions. Over the last year, our customers in the private and public sectors made one thing clear. They need a Canadian company to build the large-scale AI infrastructure to support their sovereign vision.
We listened and the Bell team has taken the lead to build Bell AI Fabric, Canada's largest sovereign AI compute project. It's an amazing time. Since announcing AI Fabric in May, we've already expanded its scope. The two leading Canadian sovereign AI companies have teamed up to bring a meaningful, differentiated AI platform solution to our customers. Bell's Ateko, BellCyber, and AI Fabric running on the best networks are now benefiting from Cohere's leading sovereign AI North model. Bell is Cohere's preferred and strategic partner for both government and enterprise sovereign AI go-to-market actions. We are really well positioned. We're also deploying Cohere internally to drive our own business outcomes while leveraging the same experts at Ateko and BellCyber. This strategic partnership is a game changer. It solidifies our AI leadership and creates an excellent platform for customers to build upon. Bell's AI Fabric is Canada's sovereign digital spine.
We're building a coast-to-coast mesh of clean-powered capacity, best-in-class connectivity, and a curated marketplace that loops value back into Canada. By pairing Bell's enterprise reach, cloud resale, air-gapped instances, cybersecurity, and Ateko expertise, we have the complete and unique full stack AI offering that is second to none. We're accelerating AI adoption across platforms with a sharp focus on cybersecurity, automation, threat intelligence, and advanced contact center AI where Bell is the leader. Simply put, Bell gives customers the services they require. Sovereignty now impacts every area of our business from network, security, cloud, and AI. We made strategic announcements in each of these domains, positioning Bell with the right assets at this pivotal moment. Bell is uniquely able to serve high-security, top secret, air-gapped environments, a significant opportunity that aligns perfectly with our solution strategy.
Our goal: we've created three startups in less than two years, delivering three quarters of a billion dollars of revenue. Our target: double it over the next three years to $1.5 billion. This growth enhances our customer relationships. It creates differentiated, value-accretive opportunities which leverage our industry-leading enterprise networks and unmatched technical bench across Telco and Ateko domains. In the end, our strategy builds on our position as the most trusted partner while helping our customers benefit from leading AI automation solutions. Lastly, double click on the numbers. Overall enterprise revenue is projected to grow at a positive compound annual rate of 2%- 4%, with EBITDA also targeted to grow at a CAGR of 1%- 3%. This is a materially improved trajectory, and that's not just relative to the last couple of years but the last couple of decades.
It's an excellent time to build a Canadian communications and tech services champion powered by the best enterprise sovereign AI solutions. Fully leveraging AI across Bell and leading in AI-powered solutions, we create a growth platform built on technical expertise, platform trust, and leadership. Our ambitions are clear: double AI-powered solutions revenue by 2028, enhance our customer relationships, and unlock new opportunities backed by our industry-leading networks. We look forward to sharing our continued success with you. Thank you very much.
Please welcome Sean Cohan, President, Bell Media.
Good morning. Happy to talk today about Bell Media, its move from legacy Canadian broadcaster to digital media and content powerhouse with global impact and how it's well positioned for sustainable, differentiated growth for BCE today and through 2028. First, a bit about me and what brings me here. I'm an adopted Canadian, a recovering New Yorker, a former investment banker and management consultant who spent nearly 20 years leading at ad networks in Nielsen. I was drawn to Canada and Bell due to Bell Media's unique portfolio of platinum assets, brands and content. I saw it as something widely misunderstood and underestimated. Thriving in the global media ecosystem today is no easy feat. Big media players everywhere are facing challenges and an uneven trajectory. Despite that, nearly two years into the journey, we've built solid momentum and I remain just as excited by Bell Media's growth potential.
Before I go on further, let's take a look at some video.
It's about to get crazy. Let us raise an army. We come in tonight with breaking news.
With a Canadian perspective.
The Oscar goes to the show.
Joe starts in 5, 4, 3, 2.
Can I get a stay with us? You ready for the next adventure, pal?
Get this party started.
I don't even have my horizon pound.
Super duper excited. Unbelievable.
Oh, Canada.
Canada.
Canada.
Super team Canada.
Let's roll. Are you ready?
Me? Yeah.
Survivor Quebec.
Stay back, stay strong, and what?
You're a Swiftie.
Your time starts now.
[Foreign language] Camera. Action, baby.
Get ready for amazing.
It's always better to see it on the big screen first, isn't it? Let's dive in. Let me start by skipping to the end of the movie. Success in Bell Media. It'll be measured by a handful of straightforward metrics. Metrics delivering single-digit compound annual growth in revenue and EBITDA, continuing to expand digital revenue to 60% of total revenues, and growing Crave to 6 million paid subscribers and $1 billion in annual revenue with EBITDA margins of over 25%. All en route to even more robust free cash flow and a bigger business at Bell Media. The route to get to those numbers and our 2028 powerhouse ambition is about first growing our content leadership across sports, entertainment, and news and owning the key cultural moments for Canadians across these genres. Where folks go for that content has shifted dramatically to digital platforms.
For us, it's about accelerating digital transformation. With that in mind, scaling Crave and streaming, driving digital ad revenue, and driving synergies to and with BCE, all while yielding free cash flow growth as a low capital intensity cash generator and an important source for BCE. First, let's start with our content leadership. Bell Media is the largest media and entertainment player and largest content acquirer and maker in Canada by a country mile, and Bell Media captures the largest audiences in Canada to show for it. In fact, Bell reaches 98% of Canadians each month. This audience and frenetic social media activity are driven by marquee live events, what we call events of consequence or simply cultural moments.
Bell Media owns almost every important event and moment in Canada, from the Super Bowl to the Oscars to the national election, from the Emmys to F1 to Grey Cup to the 2026 FIFA Men's World Cup. Here in Canada, if people are talking about it, it's likely on one of our platforms. Our iconic sports, entertainment, and news brands and content drive more than 800 million hours of consumption by Canadians each month on screens big and small. We have the number one Canadian broadcaster, the number one out-of-home player in the market, the number one news service, the number one sports services, and the number one domestic video streamer. Let's talk about that streamer, Crave, a fully bilingual video service.
Crave is the number one Canadian-owned streamer and has grown explosively over the last year and a half, and it stands apart in the market due to its beloved series and movies. The content Canada craves, one might say. It starts with HBO. Our long-term agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery makes Crave the exclusive home of HBO programming for the foreseeable future. With new seasons of hits like The White Lotus, The Last of Us 2, new Game of Thrones spin-offs, and great library shows like Succession and Sex and the City, HBO content captures Canadian viewers' attention. The creative service also includes content from strategic long-term agreements with Starz, Disney, Sony, NBC Universal, and more. Alongside this great acquired fare, Bell Media creates award-winning original content as well.
Today we partner with some of the world's best creative collaborators like Fox, Lionsgate, Fremantle, Canal+, Plews, Seth Rogen, and Will Arnett to produce shows like Late Bloomer, Empathy, Sullivan's Crossing, and Shoresy. This content helps build the Crave brand, drive fandom, and grow subscribers. Couple this with a huge library of enduring classics like Friends and The Office and soapy competition reality shows like Love Island and there's truly something for every Canadian. Today, Crave boasts 30,000 hours of content for consumers and by year-end it'll exceed 40,000 hours. Moving over to sports now, our leading sports services TSN and RDS have literally the deepest, broadest lineup of sports rights and talent in the world. We have long-term rights to virtually every sport and event.
This includes the NFL and Super Bowl, the Men's World Cup, F1, The Masters, PGA, CFL and Grey Cup, the Tennis Grand Slams, basketball, regional hockey, iconic teams like the Leafs and the Habs, which we just renewed, plus the biggest portfolio of women's sports in the market. Consequently, we've had the largest reach of any sports service in Canada: 17 million Canadians monthly. It's an amazing schedule. Whichever season you look at—the Raptors, the Bills, the Habs, the Grey Cup, PWHL, Super Bowl, and so on—all peaking with FIFA Men's World Cup in Canada next year, next summer. Live sports is without a doubt the last bastion of appointment viewing left in entertainment. A great example of this is the Super Bowl, where 17 million viewers tuned in last February. Not to be confused with TSN or RDS's 17 million monthly viewers, which I just mentioned.
This is 17 million in one night across TSN, CTV, and RDS. Let's take a minute to take a look at Bell Media sports.
Go big or go home.
The World Cup is coming to Canada.
This is the moment we've all been waiting for. The greatest show on earth. The shot of a lifetime.
The long journey is over.
McElroy has his masterpiece.
A full-time champion of the world.
Call them underdogs, call them dark horses, call them wrestling.
Rookie World Cup finalists.
One of the greatest matches ever.
Caitlin Clark.
Bingo. Are you kidding me? [Foreign language]
Jay Gilders Alexander meeting the moment for.
The second time in three years.
Toronto is the Grey Cup champion. One of the epic performances. Papa Felicio.
Next up, CTV. CTV, Bell's broadcast network, is a broad reach vehicle which has been the most watched broadcast service in Canada for a remarkable 24 consecutive years. It's truly a megaphone for driving Crave, sports, and lots more. Now, CTV content delivers mass reach, whether sports contests alongside TSN, entertainment shows like eTalk, or big award shows like the Oscars. The Oscars, for example, brought 8 million Canadians to CTV, making it the number one entertainment broadcast of this past year. Alongside entertainment and sports, news is another important part of Bell's differentiation. CTV News is the undisputed news leader across linear and digital, national, and local markets here in Canada. Let me say that again: the undisputed news leader across virtually all measures.
Now, shifting how we deliver news, that is, publishing its stories as they break rather than holding for nightly newscasts, has helped catapult us to number one in digital news in 2025 and has made us the leader for 17 of the last 18 months. Finally, Bell's content leadership isn't only limited to video platforms. Whether in audio with iHeart or out of home with Astral, Bell Media leads the market in out of home. Think billboards, street furniture, and the like. Bell Media's Astral is the number one player; market coverage has grown from 20- 50 markets, and we've expanded our digital screen and street furniture portfolio significantly. Content leadership is delivering consumers the compelling content they want across sports, entertainment, and news. It's a big part of what differentiates us and positions us to deliver on that powerhouse ambition. There's a lot more.
The momentum we have today is built on our transformation journey. As Mirko Bibic noted earlier, Bell Media recognized as early as 2020 that content consumption, technology, and business models were changing dramatically, that we had to start to change our thinking and approach. Bell Media has since undertaken a series of moves on its portfolio, its content, its tech stack, and its data. These moves have set us on a journey which has shown encouraging progress, and the path has since come into even greater focus. This transformation path is going from linear to digital, from closed system to content. Everywhere consumers look to listen and watch, from broadcaster to streamer, distributor and producer, and from selling broadcast ad spots to cross-platform sought-after audiences linked to outcomes like dealer visits or sales. Look, some of this is simplistically like fishing. You gotta fish where the fish are.
Viewers, subscribers, and advertisers, they've all been migrating to a streaming, digital, and on-demand world. We've been making that same transition in content delivery, marketing, and ad selling. Our progress can be seen in a dramatic shift in the revenue mix towards digital. Already close to half our revenue is from digital, with a path to over 2/3 over the next five years. In line with that mix shift, after uneven results in media for a handful of years, we've unlocked financial growth in 2024 and 2025 thus far. We grew EBITDA by high single digits in 2024 and are on track to continue to grow by single- digits in 2025 and expect this to continue through 2028. Supporting this is five consecutive quarters of year-over-year revenue and EBITDA growth. They won't all be growth quarters to be sure, that's the nature of the beast.
Bell Media's aim is to grow annual revenue and annual EBITDA by sustainable single digits through 2028. In contrast to others in the space, we can say we are growing beyond compelling content and sound transformation thinking. What's behind that growth? In a word, Crave. Crave is and will continue to be a big driver across Bell. We're leaning into streaming and direct-to-consumer, and that focus has driven a historic 1.2 million new subscribers since the start of 2024, a whopping 40% increase, which brings us today to 4.3 million subscribers. By the end of 2028, we expect that number will be 6 million subscribers and will allow us to achieve our ambition of making Crave a $1 billion annual revenue business with EBITDA margins of over 25%. This translates to a target of double-digit CAGRs on subscribers, revenue, and other metrics between now and then.
We're doing this by growing distribution at Crave. We started with the launch of Crave on Amazon Prime Video and, as Blaik Kirby described, more collaborations with Bell's mobility and Internet offerings. We're doing this by offering subscribers flexibility and exposure, expanded choice with an ad-supported tier. We're doing this by making Quebec a priority and ramping up supply of French-language original content. We're doing this by investing in meaningful, global, and profitable content that differentiates Crave from others. We're also doing this through high-value streaming bundles to consumers like our Disney+, Crave and TSN bundle. As an aside, there'll be more like this to come, offering subscribers value and choice. We're making dramatic improvements to Crave's user experience, leveraging AI to drive personalization, content discovery, and even more engagement this year.
All the while, we're expanding Crave to include direct access to CTV and Nouveau content, to an expanded kids portfolio, to news and select sports. Crave is a big part of our growth story, as is ads that is capitalizing on digital advertising and data revenue opportunities in the market. The growth of the digital ad market in Canada has been truly extraordinary. In the past five years, digital ad spend in Canada has gone from $7 billion- $13 billion, and we expect that to outpace $16 billion by 2028. Bell Media is targeted driving its ad revenue by driving growth in digital to more than offset declining legacy sources. We're doing that through big changes in our go-to-market, by making Bell easier to buy, and by dramatically expanding our digital ad inventory.
Growing impressions with Crave with ads, which is sold out today, growing as fast as the platform, addressable TV, FAST and AVOD offerings, and other platforms including YouTube and TikTok, not to mention our digital out-of-home inventory. Over the past year, Astral has increased digital faces by more than 200% with plans to expand. More.
The last element of our 2028 powerhouse ambition is synergies for BCE and continuing to generate low capital intensity cash. As mentioned, Bell Media has historically averaged low capital intensity. Think 4%- 5%, and as you heard from Blaik and John earlier, we'll take full advantage of our synergies, those in consumer bundling and marketing, in data and in tech with the rest of BCE. From bundling Crave with consumer offerings, think mobility, Internet, and content, to leaning into privacy, safe data, and insights from across BCE's consumer touch points. Go from marketing consumer and Bell Business Markets services across Bell Media's various platforms to sharing a tech stack and people on consumer and B2B apps. There are a range of cross business unit advantages which we are capitalizing on, including content, leadership, transformation, Crave digital ads, synergies, and cash generation.
They all play important roles in our 2028 powerhouse ambition. Our recipe is designed to allow growth businesses to offset legacy declines and allow us to achieve single digit compound annual growth in revenue and EBITDA with highly efficient capital deployment. The headline Bell Media story over the last few years and the next three is the largest Canadian media player leaning into digital while optimizing legacy, driving growth, and driving more cash flow. I'm excited about continuing to drive growth in Crave sports and our digital portfolio and excited to capitalize on how often our global competitors underestimate us. While there's still work to be done with some downtown Toronto style potholes along the way, Bell Media is differentiated and winning. It has the globally unique portfolio of assets, the content and the brands, the path, the plan, and the momentum to be that powerhouse. Thanks very much for your time and interest.
Please welcome Curtis Millen, EVP and CFO. BCE and Bell Canada,
Hi. Good morning everyone. Our operating environment has shifted dramatically over the last five years, and as you've heard from my colleagues today, we've made foundational investments to position the company for the future. The opportunities we have unlocked are very attractive. We've built out 3 million fiber locations in Canada over the last five years to reach 8 million fiber locations. We've expanded our fiber expertise into the fast-growing U.S. market, diversifying our revenue base and solidifying our position as the third largest fiber broadband provider in North America. We've built out a world-class 5G wireless network. We've doubled down on customer experience, which is driving strong results in the market. We've leveraged technology to drive cost efficiency. We've developed full stack sovereign AI infrastructure and solutions.
We've transformed Bell Media into a digital-first business, all of which combined increase the durability of our financial profile. We've made significant progress, but there remain many more opportunities going forward. When we combine our unique and differentiated assets, our focused strategy, and our disciplined approach to capital allocation, we have a clear path to strong free cash flow growth, sustainable dividends, and driving total return for shareholders. With that in mind, I plan to cover three topics with you today. First, our disciplined approach to capital allocation designed for the new environment that we operate in. Second, how the foundational investments we've made in our businesses are future-proofing our financial profile. Third, the financial results that we expect to generate by executing on our forward-looking strategic plan. Okay, let's double click on capital allocation.
We have a disciplined approach to capital deployment designed for a new operating environment and built along the following framework: strengthen the balance sheet, fund our focused strategic priorities, and importantly, return capital to shareholders. In terms of balance sheet deleveraging, we're targeting a 3.5x net debt leverage ratio by 2027 and have a clear path toward 3.0x by 2030. We've optimized the cost of capital for a U.S. fiber expansion by leveraging a third-party capital partnership. This reduces our funding requirements and reduces the risk for our shareholders. We'll consider funding partnerships in other areas going forward if they accelerate growth and strengthen our financial profile. While deleveraging, we'll also continue to fund the key strategic priorities my colleagues have shared with you today that will drive both growth and efficiency. Our current dividend is meaningful and sustainable.
The 40%- 55% free cash flow payout ratio represents a balanced policy that enables us to achieve our capital market goals. The attractive dividend yield helps drive total shareholder return. The free cash flow we generate, combined with our disciplined approach to capital allocation, is expected to drive long term value for shareholders. Okay, let's have a look at how the foundational investments we've made in our businesses are future proofing our operations and financial profile. We're a very different company than we were five years ago, and our transformation will continue over the next three years and beyond. As a result of foundational investments in our IT systems and processes, fiber and 5G networks, AI products and services, and digital media platforms, we've become far more resilient and future focused across all business lines. On the consumer side, fiber subs now represent 73% of our Internet subscriber base.
That's expected to grow to over 80% by 2028. We've also created a new growth factor in the U.S. with the acquisition of Ziply Fiber. We currently have 1.4 million fiber homes in the U.S. We expect to exit 2028 with approximately 3 million locations. By 2028, Internet, wireless, and content is expected to drive 85% of consumer and small biz revenue. On the enterprise side, the solutions we provide are increasingly powered by next gen products and services: fiber, wireless, AI-powered solutions. By 2028, around 65% of enterprise revenue is expected to be driven by these next gen services. Through strategic investment and focus, we've transformed our media business into a largely digital media platform. Media has transformed from just 16% digital base revenue in 2020 to now being on a path to reach approximately 60% digital by 2028.
Put simply, the investments we have made are supporting an increasingly growth focused operating mix. As a result, our financial profile is increasingly future proof and positioned for long term growth. We expect that by 2028, approximately 80% of our revenue and 73% of our EBITDA will be generated by growth services. This represents a dramatic shift in our operating and financial profiles and highlights how the investments we have made position us well for the future. Over the last five years, we've also made foundational investments and are leveraging AI capabilities to simplify our operating structure and deliver significantly improved customer experiences. As Hadir and Blake discussed earlier, our customers have noticed customer complaints have decreased. Churn is on track for even further improvement. Our strong track record to date gives us comfort to increase our cost savings target from $1 billion- $1.5 billion by 2028.
This target includes the efficiencies mentioned by Hadir and Blake earlier, as well as other savings driven by leveraging technology solutions internally, simplifying operations, and the overall benefits of executing against our four strategic priorities. $1.5 billion is our 2028 target. There will be incremental cost efficiencies in 2029 and beyond as we continue to streamline our operations and exit legacy services, for example copper, DCOM, related real estate, and rationalization. Those are benefits not included in the target $1.5 billion that represents an incremental opportunity. To date, we've monetized $100 million from this program, but it's still in the early stages. Enormous value in monetizing our copper, though it's going to take some time to fully harvest. Put simply, our foundational investments in customer experience and operational simplicity will continue to improve customer retention and generate cost savings.
We've also made foundational investments in our fiber network and have solidified our position as the third largest fiber broadband provider across North America. We're well positioned for growth as fiber is the clear winner in the broadband landscape. Growth will be driven by capturing the significant ramp up of subscribers and new fiber footprint as well as by reaching run rate levels of penetration on fiber that we've already built. In terms of new fiber footprint, our acquisition of Ziply Fiber and our Network Fiber Company partnership enable a straightforward path to double our current Canadian fiber footprint by the end of 2028. We plan to double our U.S. footprint to approximately 3 million fiber locations. Over time, we plan to leverage the Network Fiber Company partnership to expand our fiber footprint in the U.S. to 8 million locations, bringing our total fiber reach to over 16 million locations.
By leveraging our partnership with PSP Investments, we'll accelerate and expand our ability to monetize the U.S. fiber opportunity. For every $1 invested by Network Fiber Company, BCE will only invest $0.20- $0.25. Funding is proportionate to our 49% equity stake, and the partnership will utilize non-recourse leverage to reduce the overall risk of the investment. Our CapEx requirements in the U.S. will drop dramatically and will largely become success-based spend, and we still expect to deliver 20+% returns. We know fiber is the clear winner in the broadband market. Where we have fiber, we've been capturing the majority of net adds and growing our market share. As Blake Kirby mentioned earlier, we reached 46% penetration within five years in our new footprints in Canada. Ziply Fiber has also been able to drive consistent and dramatic penetration ramp-up across new fiber build cohorts.
There is significant opportunity in both Canada and the U.S. to drive penetration in markets where we've already deployed capital. 25% of our fiber footprint in Canada has been built within the last 3.5 years. 40% of Ziply Fiber's fiber footprint has been built within the last four years, so a continued ramp-up in penetration is expected across these markets. I would also note that 46% is the market share we capture in Canada within the first five years. It does not reflect run rate share in some of our more tenured fiber markets. Penetration is over 50%, so there is much more opportunity to increase our share of overall broadband subs. This increasingly future-focused operating profile translates into improving financials across every operating line.
Over the next three years, we expect to deliver a consolidated revenue CAGR of 2%- 4% while continuing to transform both our operating mix and financial profile. We expect to generate or $3 billion of new growth revenue over this period that more than offsets the decline in legacy products and services over the same period. We expect to deliver a consolidated adjusted EBITDA CAGR of 2%- 3%, again with net growth across all businesses. This growth rate reflects significant contribution from fiber, wireless, AI-powered enterprise, and digital media. It also reflects the impact of legacy headwinds, which will represent a much lower share of our financial profile by the time we get to 2028. Excluding the headwinds, our expected adjusted EBITDA CAGR would be north of 6%.
I also think it's important to point out that these growth metrics only include a portion of Bell AI Fabric's significant growth opportunity. There's also value upside not reflected in these financials as the investment value being created by a 49% stake in the U.S. fiber partnership with PSP Investments is not consolidated. We expect to generate significant free cash flow growth over the next few years. As discussed, our investments across our strategic priorities will drive EBITDA growth. We'll see benefits from the normalization of working capital, lower severance costs, and lower lease payments, which will offset interest and cash tax pressures. CapEx spending is expected to remain relatively flat in 2028 vs 2025, but resulting in a lower capital intensity ratio over the next three years. We expect to grow free cash flow after lease payments at a CAGR of approximately 15% by 2028.
We'll be a company that delivers sustainable growth across all business units, generates significant discretionary free cash flow, benefits from lower capital intensity, operates with renewed financial flexibility, and is powered by next gen services anchored by our unmatched brand and enduring customer relationships. Our free cash flow generation underpins a resilient investment grade credit profile and supports meaningful deleveraging over time. We expect to reach our target 3.5x net debt leverage ratio by 2027, with a clear path toward 3.0x by 2030. These targets reflect our sharpened focus on balance sheet strength and financial flexibility. We expect to reach these milestones through a combination of organic EBITDA growth, free cash flow generation, and near term monetization of non-core assets. As you've heard from my colleagues today, we have a clear and actionable path to delivering strong financial results.
The integrated strength of our unique and differentiated assets is the foundation of our confidence in the 2028 outlook we've presented today. Between now and 2028, net leverage is expected to decrease to 3.5x by 2027. Below 3.5x by 2028, we expect revenue to increase at a CAGR of 2%- 4%, adjusted EBITDA increasing at a 2%- 3% CAGR. Capital spending will remain relatively flat on an absolute dollar basis and will decrease as a percentage of revenue to approximately 14%. Free cash flow is expected to grow at a CAGR of approximately 7%. Free cash flow after lease payments is forecast to grow at an impressive 15% CAGR. Between now and the end of 2028, we expect to generate $22 billion of cumulative free cash flow before CapEx and lease payments. We also anticipate returning approximately $5 billion to shareholders through a sustainable and disciplined dividend strategy.
In summary, we're driving a step function increase in free cash flow. Our technology investments are delivering measurable improvements in customer experience and operational efficiency. Growth funding remains disciplined, generating attractive returns across our core businesses and more than offset declines in legacy services. Capital intensity has been reduced, and spending is increasingly demand driven. We're actively deleveraging and enhancing financial flexibility. Our dividend approach remains prudent and sustainable, reinforcing our commitment to long-term value creation. Simply put, we have reshaped our financial foundation, positioning BCE to deliver accelerated free cash flow growth, a stronger and more resilient balance sheet, a sustainable dividend, and meaningful long-term value to shareholders. Thank you.
Thank you, Curtis. Now, throughout the day you heard from. Many members of BCE's strong and seasoned leadership team. Mirko provided an overview of BCE's strategic priorities. Blaik detailed how we're delivering the best fiber and wireless networks. Hadeer walked us through how we're putting customers first, Harold outlined our U.S. fiber strategy, and John detailed our plan to lead an enterprise with AI-powered solutions. Sean shared our ambition to build a digital media and content powerhouse, and Curtis just outlined BCE's financial strategy and outlook. We hope you found today's presentations valuable and can better appreciate how our assets are both unique and highly differentiated and tightly aligned with our core business in a way that sets us apart. We are now ready to begin our Q and A session, so I would like to invite all of today's presenters.
Up on stage and I'd like to do this along with Mark McDonald, who is our Chief Technology Officer, driving the network and the connections through everything. As they settle into their seats, I'd like to quickly note how we'll run this session around the room. We have several Bell brand ambassadors with microphones. If you do have a question, please raise your hand and we will bring a microphone over to you. We ask that you introduce yourself by name and the organization that you're with before asking your question. With that, I'd like to open it up to our first question. Please do put your hands up. If you have one.
Yes, we have one here.
Hey, thanks. Good to go first. Vince Valentini with TD Cowen. Great day, guys. Thank you very much for hosting it and all the incremental information I'm a little confused by o ne of the targets is that in. Almost every segment, the revenue growth is. Targeted to grow faster than the EBITDA growth, which is not what we're used to with BCE, you've been so focused o n cost cutting that we usually see, but a little bit ahead at the same time, you seem to be targeting that your leases are going to go from $1.1 billion down to $800 million. Is there simply some accounting change there, Curtis, of some leases turning into OpEx, or is there some mix change within the revenue? If you can try to unpack that for us, it'd be helpful.
Okay, I'll take the second piece first, Vince. There's no accounting change. It's literally just we are focused on free cash flow. We look at managing CapEx and capital leases together. Ultimately, the new additions in 2024, 2025, 2026 are going to be lower than they were in 2022, 2023. We have line of sight to lease cash repayments coming down over time. Ultimately, it's just free cash flow management for us. It's managing our spend.
Are there any specific buckets of the leases? Because it's a pretty big number like that, you could.
Is it the size of the It's a bit of everything. I'd say all the investments that we've been making in IT processes and just simplification that are run the business CapEx. If I'm thinking about CapEx and leases in a similar bucket, you know our cost to run the business is just coming down. We're more efficient. No set top box means you don't have capitalized set top boxes. Right? Less equipment, network equipment rolling out, more of it's being put through CapEx than leases. No accounting, just free cash flow management. What's the first part again?
2-4 vs 2-3 .
Yeah. Why is revenue growth? Ultimately, you know, we're clearly saying still focused on efficiency and cost savings. That's why we bumped up our $1 billion target to $1.5 billion. Ultimately, we're driving 15% free cash flow growth, and we didn't need to model an EBITDA margin expansion. Higher EBITDA dollars, flat EBITDA % margin.
There's nothing in the mix. Revenue like some of the new DC s tuff or maybe some of the TPIA s tuff out in Alberta and BC. Is there anything big in terms of? Mix that we should think about? Maybe your answer is telling m aybe the EBITDA is a bit conservative relative to the revenue. You don't want to overshoot at this point in time?
We're certainly going to deliver on what we're promising. We'd all like to be here in three years and say we over delivered, but ultimately, look, there's product mix change year- after- year- after- year. There are some products that are legacy. We still need to manage the cost to deliver that, the cost to maintain. Yeah, we have products that are ramping up, and we're kind of driving increased margin over time in those products. On a portfolio basis, ultimately by 2028, driving free cash flow, EBITDA dollars have increased, EBITDA margin flat. This team is going to be laser focused on driving out cost efficiencies.
Question over here.
I think that's me. Thank you very much, Drew McReynolds from RBC. I just echo Vince's comments. Great presentation, and thanks for all the forward guidance here. I'll limit lots of questions, but I'll l imit it to just a couple of topics, I think. First, on the regulatory environment. Mirko, you've been pretty clear on your position in Canada. What are some of your working assumptions? That underpin, you know, this 2025, 2028. Outlook with respect to regulation in Canada? Maybe a question for John within sovereign and AI, I don't think this Liberal minority government and Kearney are done with announcements and initiatives. What are your expectations looking forward with respect to some of the government business? That could potentially transition, you know. Within the envelope of what you're trying to do. Thank you.
Thank you, Drew. I'll take the first part, John, you can take the second part. We've considered a range of outcomes, Drew, particularly on the TPIA or the fiber resale wholesale rates. Our position on the policy was quite clear and remains quite clear, but the decision has been made. The job of this team here is to execute against that background, against the context that the surrounding circumstances. On that front, we are going to execute given the environment as we always do, and we're going to do it well, and we're going to deliver the plan that we've outlined. Now, the key thing is the rates that the CRTC will establish, the final rates. We continue to urge the Commission to make sure that those who build networks in Canada are fully and appropriately compensated for the full cost of building those networks and maintaining them.
On that front, specifically to your question, the ranges that we've provided you consider a range of outcomes, but again, fundamentally comes down to execution. The roadmap that Blake laid out in detail during his presentation on AI and sovereign. Over to you, John.
Great, thanks Drew. The way I like to explain it, we've created something that's one of one, which really resonates at this time. I'll unpack the layers of it. The first one is anyone looking for a sovereign high-density compute, they need an incredible amount of fiber, best, fastest, and most reliable. That's what I've got Mark here for, and he's building that well. Anyone building needs to have that, and it underpins every single facility that we're creating. Second on deck, really, really important, you have to have energy. We have 500 MW right now. We don't have to wait 7- 12 years to build some very expensive facilities. That really matters, and we've got great partnership with the folks who have that energy. The next on deck, think about the building and the land.
We're being very thoughtful, and a point that I hadn't mentioned earlier, we're not just building without demand. We're securing the anchor tenant, we're securing a long-term deal in terms of utilizing that facility. Then we're retrofitting or building anew, and we've retrofitted one, and we're building another one that'll come on stream at the end of this year. The next you need is a sovereign compute facility. Right now we've got GPUs from Nvidia with a partner, and we've got inference chips or TSPs with Groq. The beauty there is that we can grow faster with partners. We get a share of that on go-to-market as we sell, but they become anchor tenants, and I think there will be additional relationships that we'll bring to bear on that accord.
Next on deck, which really resonates well on the sovereign front, we're enabling many small Canadian companies to come on deck with us and to be part of that fabric stack. That is a high priority for our federal government, and we're partnering with them, bringing them on deck, and helping them succeed in this environment. Adjacent to that is the Cohere relationship, who is very important to support the only LLM, an excellent company. There's only four or five countries in the world that have one to help them succeed, and then we can take that to market with the expertise we built. Another important part of that fabric stack is SaaS, and the line, I think you've heard the Prime Minister or Minister Solomon, is sovereignty without solitude.
It's very important in building a Canadian sovereignty stack that we still get the best of what the world can offer at this point. You can't replicate some of those capabilities, then you've got to bring it to life. One of the challenges with AI is that enterprise AI is hard. Enterprise AI is not like in your pocket doing ChatGPT or Perplexity. We've invested significantly in a number of companies to onramp AI into the federal government, into large enterprise accounts as part of that. If you then roll through and think about what we've built and what we're going to build, and I know folks like the financial numbers and they weren't in the presentation. The first five facilities that will go live all have IRRs north of 20%, and one is built, occupied, the other one sold, being built.
We will build the other ones upon securing the lead tenant, an agreement for that. The funnel is terrific. The one thing there's not right now is power for the AI agenda. I think just one company, OpenAI, this last two weeks has asked for 27 GW of power, and a gigawatt of power is an enormous amount of power. We don't have concerns about the funnel of the pipeline. What we're doing is investing. Linking back to your question, we're going to build something amazing for Canada with all the layers of that stack, all the sovereign capabilities and the go-to-market, partnering with the best tech companies in Canada and delivering that at a moment in time where it is perfectly, perfectly placed vis-à-vis the federal government or provincial governments and what they really care about.
Thank you.
To remind people, do put up your. a question, please raise your hand. We've got a number of mics, so we can get a bit of a queue started here, right here up front.
All right, thank you very much for taking the question. Jerome Dubreuil from Desjardins. My two are on the Ziply Fiber opportunity. Maybe the first one for Harold will be. We often hear about some of the investors are concerned that. You're going at it against some very big guys in the U.S., some of the AT&Ts and guys like that. What gives you the right to win? Maybe in terms of building capabilities, why can't the bigger guys all do it at the same time, especially outside of your ILAC territory? That would be the first one, and the second one is on the. Returns, maybe more for Curtis, you know. The PSP Investments partnership, these kind of partners. Have different risk-reward profile they're looking for. I'm wondering how the return profile. Changed after you enabled the PSP Investments partnership.
I'll take the first one. Curtis, thank you for the question. It is an interesting one. I think that we have been building fiber for the last five years in the four northwest states we built. The first plan was to build in our ILAC footprint. The second, we identified adjacent markets where we had network running through and we thought, gee, there's a town in between our towns, we should build there as well. We have fiber that goes beyond those four states that are along routes that we have selected and identified locations that are not likely to be built by others. In the timeframe that we're talking about, we've designed across a set of criteria, including return criteria and proximity to network that we already have.
We do believe that the plan to get to 3 million in three years and the plan to get to 8 million is something that is appropriate for us and we think we can deliver on that.
There are a lot of homes in the U.S. to fiber up. Fundamentally,
Then in terms of returns, look, PSP Investments and our partnership with them increases our returns, and as Harold Zeitz said, it accelerates our ability to build fiber, sell fiber. We know fiber wins in market, and again, we're not competing with Verizon and AT&T, we're competing with cable companies in region. We are first fiber where there's already fiber. We're not building there. We are bringing fiber to market. We're bringing these superior product to market and driving penetration from there. The partnership with PSP Investments allows us to do more of that and to do it faster. It drives returns, and the double win here is we're a strategic provider, so we have strategic returns, and we now get to benefit from leverage returns because it's non-recourse debt at the partnership level.
Over here.
Yes, thank you, Maher Yaghi from Scotiabank. I wanted to maybe just step back. Looking at your guidance for 2025 to 2028, it seems, you know, when I look at 2024, 2025, your consumer SMB and. Enterprise was declining by 0.5%. You're excited, expecting it to grow by 2%. If you can unpack the consumer part because you're assuming improved pricing probably in that guidance. What gives you the conviction that we will see improved pricing in Canada? After the declines that we have seen? The second question on the enterprise. Side, is it fair to say that the revenue that is coming in? Growth revenue is less margins than what you're losing? That's why we're seeing the revenue growth. For the next three years, higher than the EBITDA growth in the consolidated assumptions. Thank you.
So, Maher, on the second part, there is some of what you indicated. The important thing to highlight is, particularly on the enterprise side, whether or not it's BellCyber, Ateko, or Bell AI Fabric, it may not be the margins that you customarily associate with, let's say, fiber and voice, but it's all net new revenue, net new growth, all fundamentally connected to our core business. It's real. Each one of them is delivering revenue now and delivering the growth rates, each even organically, that John highlighted. That's on the second question. On the first, with respect to the conviction around consumer and small business, maybe Blaik, you start and I might build on it.
We're very confident the wireless business is starting to come back, and I know all of you follow pricing very closely, but the transactional rates have improved significantly the last few quarters. What brought wireless down will also bring wireless back up. We're starting to see that pricing discipline that the Canadian wireless has historically seen. I think it's wireless coming back, and then some of our legacy businesses become less relevant over time as the mix shifts more to Internet content and wireless.
In wireless, just to build on Blaik, we've seen starting in the back half of the second quarter, the last bit of the second quarter, we started to see price stabilization and it's continued to improve. As Blaik mentioned, the transaction rates are a bit better now than they have been over the past little while. There's been a nice mix shift as well to the premium brands away from the flanker brands, which has provided a lift there too.
Got a question at the back here.
Good morning, it's Bryan Pilsworth from Foyston. Curtis. Just a quick question. You put that note, the $5 billion return in the form of dividends. I just wanted to understand, does that infer some growth on a per share basis?
No, that's literally if you take the number of shares times the current dividend and you roll it out three years, you get to about $5 billion.
Okay, then the excess free c ash is going back to the deleveraging. Mostly then?
To fund our growth.
The second thing is just on the flat CapEx. You know core Bell has been coming. As the fiber build has been coming down. What's been offsetting it to keep. It flatlined during that time period?
I'd say it's funding of the growth initiatives. We are building fiber still and we just closed Ziply. Over the next three years we're still building fiber in the U.S., which is new spend.
That's up for the $3 million pre the PSP Investments network build?
Correct. Some of the build is still within Ziply Fiber's traditional copper footprint. That's on our account. Everything else is through the partnership. Through 2028 we still have, I would say, more CapEx to build out fiber footprint in the U.S. Post 2028, that'll tail off dramatically as the partnership takes basically all of the future build.
Perfect, thank you.
I just add in a perfect world we're spending a lot of demand CapEx in the U.S., right, to send modems to the new customers that we're signing up.
Hi, Sebastiano Petti from JP Morgan, thank you again for today. Just quickly, Curtis, to that last point, as you think about Harold, I forgot how you described it, but I guess growth opportunities or maybe some smaller assets that may come to market. How would you look at that from a maybe on-balance-sheet versus partnership? How would you maybe compare or think about some of that, and then as you're, I guess, Harold, thinking about the PSP Investments network investment, I think it's, you know, $5 million longer term. Can you give us maybe some interim goalposts as we should be thinking about that build engine ramping up over the next several years? You know $3 million at Ziply Fiber. Right? By 2028, I get that. The remainder, how we should be thinking about the, I guess, build engine and the glide path.
You want to take the first part?
Yeah, I might go first. The PSP Investments partnership is set up to fund new build, to fund any tuck-in acquisitions. If we look at a tuck-in acquisition and it accelerates our ability to drive free cash flow, shareholder value, then we'll consider it. The partnership is the partnership for new builds and tuck-ins.
Yeah. In terms of the overall build, which was your question, I don't think we're giving guidance past 2028, but in the first three years we're going to continue to ramp. Post 2028, we will continue to ramp and then be relatively flat as we continue to build at a much higher pace to complete to the 8, about 8 million.
The 2028 exit rate, we should anticipate an acceleration as we think about 2029 and beyond?
There will still be an increase beyond 2028, and then not much of an increase, sort of staying at that much higher pace to get to about 8 million.
As you and I guess maybe quick. Follow up on the US business. You're thinking about increasingly convergence in the U.S. as a theme, and obviously Jerome touched on it as well, but even the cable operators as well trying to. Defend their broadband base. I guess two part question. One, have you seen a change in the competitive environment from the cable operators? Comcast is a big competitor of yours in the Northwest, and maybe what does that mean from a churn perspective within the Ziply Fiber business? Secondarily, convergence. I think, Mirko, I've asked you this a million times, but as you think about just the— Need for wireless over time, I mean, where is that? I guess on the longer term or medium term kind of roadmap.
Yeah. First, to answer about competition and then about convergence or wireless as a bundle. We've done this for the last five years. I've been an investor in other companies that have been doing this for quite a bit longer, so I have good visibility to what cable companies have done over time. Certainly, they've gotten more aggressive over time. We haven't seen anything in the last couple of years that has changed. Initially, they got very aggressive. We compete largely with Comcast and Charter, the two largest, and what we found is we're getting to the penetration curve in our model actually faster than we had expected. It's actually slightly accelerated from what we had expected, and we continue to eke out a little bit better over time. We're actually getting better penetration than we expected as we're getting towards that half market share roughly.
We have not seen anything in terms of increased churn or inability to get to the penetration numbers. On your second question about wireless and convergence, a thing to think about is as these cable companies have really large bases and they do actions on pricing, it's generally to the next customer. They still have yet to sort of have this whole back business reprice that they may need to go through, which will be a massive thing for them. On the second question about wireless and convergence, you know that I have a wireless background and we have folks up here who know wireless quite well. Our belief is that we're really good at being super focused, and when we identify that our penetration curves change, then that's going to be the moment when we would do something like an MVNO. We're prepared to do that.
We think we can execute it relatively quickly, and with the relationships and experience that we have with this team here, we think we're in good shape. We don't think we should do that ahead of when we need to, and we think we have enough visibility to be able to pick that time.
Thank you.
Got one over there.
Thank you. Stephanie Price with CIBC. Thank you for this morning. Just curious, Blake had mentioned launching a f iber offering in B.C. And Alberta. Maybe you could talk a little bit mo re about is that going to be d irectly only to your mobile customers? Is that going to be offered more broadly?
Go ahead, Blaik.
Sure. It is initially going to be offered focused on our mobility base with preferred pricing when you bundle, and then there will be different pricing when you are not bundling. I think what is different about us is that we are very focused also on bundling content. What you will see from us launching this week is you will see content bundles also in Western Canada, where if you are a mobility customer, you will want to bundle content also with your mobility service. We think we can break the content Internet bundle that is in that market. Our strategy is twofold. It is really using our owner economics on content, bundling it with the mobility base in a disciplined way, and if required, we will resell fiber Internet to drive that bundle.
We're going to be playing to our strengths, Stephanie, out west as we do in the east. Our strong distribution, we have strong distribution out west. The Bell brand, which is the most trusted brand and is going to be bigger, even larger brand consideration now that we are able to resell Internet owner economics on content. Content is becoming, as Blake pointed out, an even bigger component of the customer value proposition, of course, our best network and wireless. That's playing to our strengths in the way that Blaik described out west.
Thank you. Just to follow up on AI Fabric, just curious how you think about revenue growth at the CapEx requirements. From that, I think Curtis mentioned it is an area of upside too. Your official targets for 2028.
Stephanie, thank you for the question. I'll go one level deeper in terms of the five sites we're looking to build. From 2026- 2028, those five sites will cost us $300 million and they will have revenues of $100 million- $150 million a year. What's beautiful about what we're building is we'll partner with those who have, be it skills or resources, to augment that specifically in the GPU or TSP layer. It's a beautiful linkage. If you think of capital heavy, that's not capital heavy relative to the revenue that will accrue from that. It's a really good business case that's capital light. Of course, our Ateko and BellCyber are very capital light in terms of the growth there, and the organic growth within those businesses is really, really good. That pushes us north of 40%.
I think maybe one thing I can. Add as well is because of the. Nature of our existing fiber network, our national fiber backbone, and our Metro aggregation. Network, we have a lot of fiber in the ground that we're able to leverage as the AI Fabric data centers are built at a very efficient rate.
Thank you.
Hi, thanks for taking the question. It's Matt Griffiths from Bank of America. Maybe just. John, another question for you. To the extent that you can, can you lay out maybe, you know, where the growth is coming from? It sounded like you just gave some guidance on the Bell AI Fabric. How much revenue you're assuming is coming from there? Can you link that to maybe how many megawatts you're building?
Sure.
Are you, w hat kind of assumptions for Ateko are you making for kind of enterprise adoption? Which would require maybe the integration work, and what needs to come first for these type of growth numbers that you were giving to come to fruition?
Thank you. The first question, the five initial sites have a little bit less than 73 MW of power and all of those have a very attractive IRR north of 20%. We have a terrific pipeline of customers. The scarcity now, as I mentioned earlier, there is no power available to the marketplace. We have a much larger site that will come after that time period as we build out that one that has 300 MW of power there. There is a really good pipeline. I think what we're also finding is there's this beautiful flywheel. As folks who have power see the success in what we're building, they want to be part of it. We've got a really good relationship with a software company, Canadian-based, that wants to be part of it now that will change the scale and scope.
On a provincial level, there's tremendous interest in what we're doing. I think the flywheel of opportunity is very significant there. The way we're going about it is really purposeful in terms of respecting the capital, investing in building the facilities, the air cooled, the water cooled backdoor air chillers, the landscape of those. We're being really smart about the capital and aligning that well to the revenues that would accrue from that. That would be on the Fabric side in terms of a techcoin cyber. One of the points I like is this rule of 40 that many in the room might be familiar with. You add up revenue growth and you add up margin. It was a bit like Maher's question earlier. We are really turning the dial on that revenue growth CAGR, we're punching well above 40%.
For anyone who's come from a software business, software services business, when you really punch that growth curve, the margins aren't as high as it will be otherwise because you're scaling literally hundreds and hundreds of people and then building that operating acumen around it. We see a really nice lift off as you roll forward. In the near term, it's all about revenue growth, it's all about the business. Our hypothesis in moving into this space was we think with Bell Business Markets we have a platform of the most attractive customer base. In bringing these businesses into the fold, it's made us more relevant, it's got us deeper in the stack, we're more strategic, we're spending more time with the business strategy side of it than the procurement side. It's always nice to be on the business strategy side when you're selling something vs the procurement.
All of that is coming true, and we can open doors for them that they could never open. You could have this most amazing architect in Kitchener, Ontario, one of the top 30 in the world. For them to be the front going into a large FI on Bay Street, that's almost impossible. The credibility of marrying up this world-class architect in a very key domain, wrapping that around Bell, and then going to see FIs on Bay Street, all of a sudden you have the credibility and you've got the technical acumen, and it's a perfect marriage of the two. We're seeing that come to life. We see incredible potential on a go-forward and blending those two. It's capital light, it's really accretive to our core business, and it makes us more relevant.
Matt, I want to underline one thing. There's tremendous growth potential there at Ateko for all the reasons that John has outlined. Ateko is delivering now and is growing now. There's lots of runway ahead because of the AI adoption and the need for AI automation integration. As you look, John in his presentation talked about a major FI having outsourced to Ateko their entire ServiceNow platform. It speaks to the power of marrying the expertise that the founders of Ateko have with the deep customer enterprise relationships that Bell has and the network gravitas that we have. You put those together, gave that customer confidence to say, take our ServiceNow architecture and needs and please do it for us.
Where's our next microphone, Tim?
Tim Casey from BMO. Mirko, in the p resentations, you talked a lot about I guess a roadmap to decommission copper, but you didn't give any dates there w asn't a lot of transparency on the potential for harvesting copper and real estate. Maybe if you could just explore those. Themes, I guess in the context that some of your peers have given more dates and transparency there.
Yeah. Thank you . Thank you, Tim. As I mentioned in my opening presentation, we want to do this in a smart and balanced way, and we've been going at it where we have fiber. We've been migrating residential customers from copper to fiber, and we've been decommissioning the residential component of the services in areas where we have fiber. It creates a flywheel of customer experience goodness, which you might want to touch on, Hadeer. As we continue to do that, and we've got Mark, maybe you can highlight the trial, the Simcoe, where we're fully decommissioning a central office. We want to be very precise in how we manage the transition of business customers over from legacy services to new services.
As we do that, it's going to create a flywheel of goodness both in terms of cost savings and the ability to decommission legacy services, and then of course monetize real estate footprint. The savings that come from that will be over and above the targets we've given today. Maybe on customer experience and then on Simcoe.
We continue to focus on customer experience. We focus on that through a couple, but of course the fiber customer experience is unbelievable. You get the unbreakable Internet, you get all the self-serve tools and troubleshooting and all the things that we do for our customers, and we are delivering on customer experience in three different ways. We're really focused on our customers and giving them the AI-powered tools to self-serve and to personalize their experience. We are also delivering on that for our frontline employees and agents. We're giving them superpowers, so it becomes less about swivel sharing and focusing on legacy systems and really more about delivering that fantastic customer experience.
We can talk about customer experience, and I know it sounds nice, but customer experience without a vision and a plan on how we are going to execute on that is like, you know, just nice stuff to talk about. We have the vision and the plan to transform our legacy systems to actually deliver on that customer experience, to enable that different customer experience through platforms that are AI-powered, that benefit from a redesign in every single interaction. Of course, the fiber experience is unparalleled. We know our customers prefer it, and we prefer our customers to be on fiber as well.
Maybe a couple of questions. What we're actually doing practically right now. Is decommissioning a central office in Eastern. Toronto, the Simpson central office. As Mirko said, that gives us. Very rich learnings on what does it take to migrate the customer services, both consumer and enterprise, and actually shutting down that central office. We are going beyond that. Across our entire base of central offices and services, we're doing a big data engineering exercise using AI to gather all of the cost data, all of the revenue data per service, per customer grouping. We have a very good representation. Of the opportunity at quite a great granular level, as we start to ramp. This up a little bit more. We c an do that in a very financially responsible way.
Oh yeah. Hi. Hello. David McFadgen from Cormark Securities. A question on AST. Your plans with AST. When do you expect to launch s ervice with AST? and do you expect t o have voice, text, that you and data right away? How big could this market be? I'm sure you've run some numbers.
Yeah, I can talk a little bit about our build plan. We have completed our initial testing and we're now starting to build the gateways in the ground. That's going to happen later this year, i nto next year. What we're going to do, our. Intention is to have the full suite of services, so voice, data, video m essaging, 911 over voice. As the AST constellation gets built. Out over the course of next year. As well, we will then determine what's next. The right exact moment to do a mass launch. I think we'll do some customer trials. Next year for sure. If everything works out well, quickly into a launch as well. That's the build plan. Maybe Blaik can talk a little bit about the business value.
Yeah, I think we all know Canada is a big country, but this is profound in terms of there's about 1% of the population that does not have access to cellular networks, and there's about 10% of the population that regularly goes off the grid. I think for us, for AST, it allows us to go after that 1%, and you can do the math on 1% of 40 million, which will drive incremental net, but more importantly, it's using your device and being able to drive more usage and really enable different experiences. From a consumer perspective, it's quite strong, and from an enterprise perspective, it's quite profound in terms of what enterprise customers will be able to do. We will be charging, you know, trying to monetize the incremental capability as we deploy the technology.
Just one other thing as well. The sovereign aspect, I think, is very, very important. Important elements. We are, Bell, building and o perating the ground infrastructure here, right in Canada. We'll be able to control the f ull flow of data within the borders o f Canada, which is a unique differentiator for this solution.
If we were going to run numbers, should we assume that initially the markets say 1% x $10- $15 a month and then maybe you could. Scale it up to 10% or something like that?
I think you should think incremental penetration, 1%. We're not going to get all of it. It's going to be shared, and then I think I would think of it around roughly $10- $15 incremental ARPU and penetration of that over time. Not everyone's going to value it, but there's going to be a big portion of the population that's going to see value in it.
Maybe if I could ask a question. Question on Ziply Fiber. What is the competition? With fixed wireless in your footprint. What do you expect in the future from fixed wireless?
Yeah, it's interesting. The question was about fixed wireless and we do get asked about this a bit. We have definitely seen fixed wireless come into our footprint and it's been where our copper network has not yet had fiber built, and we have seen fewer new customers through that. Not much increased churn. What we have noticed specifically—we measure this very carefully—is where we then build fiber, the penetration curve looks the same as where we built fiber where we haven't seen any fixed wireless come in, and that reinforces the hypothesis that we've had. As we go out and study this, if you have fixed wireless, cable, copper, fiber, and satellite available at your home, you're going to pick fiber. That's what we've seen come true.
We've not seen any evidence that there's any reduction in our penetration curves or anything related to churn where fixed wireless is where we have fiber.
Okay. Lastly, when do you. Expect Ziply to be free cash flow positive?
Yeah, I'd say call it second half of 2028. Right. I mean, again, I'd caveat this by saying if we can spend more COA and spend more demand CapEx, it's a good news story, but it's basically pretty close to being breakeven free cash flow second half of 2027, breakeven in 2028. As we continue to scale growth and reduce CapEx on build, 2029 is all free cash flow positive.
It should stay free cash flow positive and build free cash flow positive.
Correct.
Because you're going to use the JV w ith PSP Investments to fund future growth and it won't hit your financials.
Yeah, if we weren't building new fiber locations, it's free cash flow positive.
I think we got time for a couple more questions here. Bentley?
Bentley Cross with AIMc o. Curtis, w ithin your presentation you highlighted I think $3 billion towards debt pay down. Strategic initiatives or strategic priorities. However it was framed, how should we think about that mix between 2026 and 2028? An extension of that question, do any of the growth targets mentioned today include any M&A?
I think if I could jump in first, ultimately it's a balanced allocation. We have a couple of capital markets goalposts that we're shooting for. There is the 15% free cash flow growth. We have our revenue and EBITDA targets. We're also looking to manage our balance sheet at the same time. We think that we're going to be able to drive enough free cash flow to pay a sustainable dividend, delever our balance sheet, and fund growth. Now, is there a little gray area between, you know, paying down debt and funding growth? Yes. Ultimately, the good news is we have more opportunities than we can actually chase down. If you're thinking about digitization of media, if you're thinking about, you know, Bell AI Fabric and AI-powered solutions, it's really managing overall balance sheet and growth. Funding growth is not just CapEx, it's OpEx also, to the earlier question.
We're just going to manage that opportunity by opportunity and year- over- year.
On the second, we've provided a capital markets roadmap as early as February of this year, and we've got a balance sheet framework for you. Any M&A we're going to do will be within that framework. The first screen is you're going to hit 3.5x leverage by 2027, and we won't do anything that brings us beyond that.
Thank you all for your thoughtful questions and to our leadership team for their insights to bring. The program back to a close. I'll turn it back to Mirko. Thank you everyone.
Thank you everyone for your attention throughout the morning. I hope you've seen kind of an energized company, a fundamentally different company. We have a redefined capital markets approach that we w ere very proud to share with you today. We've got four tightly integrated strategic priorities that we are going to fund that are going to drive growth across each line of business that we have, which is super encouraging. We have a technology transformation both internally to make us better, to deliver better experiences for customers. Also, that technology transformation provides tremendous go to market revenue potential. Perhaps the most important thing, there is a cultural transformation that's taken place where you have, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, 40,000 people that are completely aligned behind the four core priorities and are eager to deliver better outcomes for our customers because that's what comes first.
If we deliver better outcomes for our customers, we're going to deliver better outcomes for you. That's the plan. We've got the targets and the ambition. Now we're going to execute, execute and execute some more for you. Again, thank you for everybody in the room for your attention and everyone online, thank you as well. Talk to you soon.