With OTE Group's core commitments to offer a top customer experience, leading digital products & connectivity services, to remain the leader in gigabit networks, and to make its operating model more modern and efficient, the new Chairman & CEO of the Group, Costas Nembis, yesterday outlined the strategic plan for the next few years.

According to his successor, Michael Chamaz, this plan is based on three main pillars: growth, transformation, and diversification.

DEVELOPMENT

• Fiber. Management's goal is for the group to lead the transition to fiber optics. He noted that OTE has already covered 1.6 million households, and the target is to increase this to 3 million in the medium term, aiming for the Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) network to cover 65% of the country by 2027. "Our aim is to move the majority of our broadband customers to fibre or hybrid Fixed wireless access infrastructure in areas that are not foreseen to be covered by fiber—our own or alternative providers'. This, combined with the wholesale agreements we have recently signed, will bring our fiber network utilization rate to over 55%."
• 5G. The priority is to utilise the 3.5GHz spectrum, with the aim of increasing population coverage to over 80%, up from 50% today. To achieve this goal, it is also planned to increase the penetration of 5G devices, as currently only 30% of the group's users have such devices. Already, as Mr. Nebis added, in the last quarter their percentage has increased significantly
• Pay TV. As for pay-TV, the goal is to increase the penetration of legal pay-TV from the current level of around 30%, close to the EU average, i.e., 50%. Nebis added that "the recent agreements with NOVA and Netflix, as well as the additional anti-piracy measures that we expect the government to bring soon, will definitely help in this direction.".
• B2B- ICT. In the corporate customer segment, the OTE chief noted that he intends to focus on innovative connectivity, migration to cloud infrastructure, new digital services, industry-specific solutions, and leveraging the company's System Solution skills. At the same time, it aims to expand further into the Public Sector and accelerate the digitization of the Private Sector through SyS expertise
• New markets. Management's plan is to grow existing markets while expanding the portfolio of non-core digital services (Cosmote Insurance, Box, Payzy). Nebis expressed his satisfaction with the BOX food ordering service, as "it has already reached 1 million customers and receives 40,000 orders per day. And we still have a long way to go." On Payzy, respectively, he said that "it has reached 400,000 customers, while 2,000 businesses have adopted Payzy Pro." It has already been launched in the German market and we want to use it even more."

TRANSFORMATION

Of course, and digital channels. Management's aim is to reduce non-sales contacts on physical channels since, as Mr. Nebis said, "these cause grumbling and complaints from customers." The unnecessary transitions of technicians in the field will be helped by the switch to fibre optics. At the same time, the aim is to use new technologies and tools, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), to move a significant part of sales and customer service to digital channels
Operational and production model. The group aims to accelerate its transformation through simplification, digitalization and operational optimization by leveraging AI tools, moving to cloud infrastructure and leveraging automation, as well as moving to Telekom Group common platforms and operating models

DIFFERENTANTION

• Customer experience. The new management aims to bring OTE Group to the top positions in Europe in terms of customer experience
• Brand. Plans are in place to further leverage the T brand—complementary to Cosmote—as it is included in the top 10 globally. "Telekom is a group with a presence in over 50 countries. It has over 300 million customers and employs over 200,000 people. Its size allows it to have more partnership opportunities than anyone else. Google, Apple, SpaceX, Perplexity, OpenAI, Nvidia, and Netflix are just some of Telekom's most prominent examples of partnerships. As we did with Netflix, we want to move to leverage as many partnerships as we can for the benefit of our customers."
• People. The investment made over the years in the continuous training of people in new technologies and work methods will continue, with the aim of moving the company even higher up the list of top employers