Wholesale
Strategy
In Wholesale, our business mix is evolving and we are delivering sustainable growth, despite a competitive local broadband market. We are continuously expanding the perimeters of our business to explore and develop new growth potential. With growth opportunities emerging in mobile, sponsored roaming and via the creation of new strategic partnerships, we are strengthening our position in wholesale markets while amplifying KPN’s collective success. We believe that deepening strategic partnerships not only stabilizes revenues – it also strengthens service reliability, leading to higher customer satisfaction and long-term value.
We are confident that our focus on delivering best-in-class national wholesale propositions in both broadband and mobile, supported by our advanced building blocks and global connectivity solutions, will drive sustained growth.
Highlights
In 2025, we successfully expanded our mobile portfolio via competitive and attractive sponsored roaming solutions. By leveraging global partnerships in travel, e-SIMs, machine-to-machine and IoT connectivity, we unlocked immediate growth potential. These offerings contributed to our organic mobile service revenue growth.
We strengthened our position by renewing key strategic partnerships and establishing new collaborations with mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), with one contract already signed and several others in the process of being finalized. These partnerships further support our growth ambitions and reinforce our ability to meet the rising demand for seamless domestic and international connectivity.
Alongside these initiatives, innovations at NL-ix (our internet exchange) are showing promising results. NL-ix continued to grow its proprietary "Elastic Interconnect" offering via our business market network and we saw increasing interest in NL-ix's unique services from international customers too.
In mobile, leveraging our global roaming networks in combination with continued demand for travel SIMs is helping to drive consistent revenue growth. Together with our partners, we are unlocking new business opportunities and accelerating this growth.
Challenges
Continued intense competition in the retail broadband market resulted in elevated churn levels this year, predominantly in our wholesale digital subscriber line (DSL) portfolio. In fiber, we continued to show solid growth in combination, this led to an overall decline in the number of broadband connections and slower broadband revenue growth. To address this, we implemented targeted strategic initiatives and actively engaged in collaborative dialogues with our broadband partners.
Outside in
An attractive open network policy makes our networks accessible for wholesale customers and gives consumers in the Netherlands a wide choice of providers. Competition in the broadband market remained intense. At the same time, the need for seamless connectivity is growing and a focus on security is becoming the new standard.
Satellite networks have emerged as a new competitive force in specific parts of the market as global demand for seamless connectivity increases. We are therefore reinforcing the reliability and security of our roaming footprint, by enabling direct-to-device satellite connectivity in addition to our mobile connectivity services, supported by strategic partnerships with innovative players.
AI is accelerating digital transformation across the telecoms sector. Beyond its role in network optimization and predictive maintenance, AI is increasingly contributing to enhanced customer engagement and personalized service delivery. We will need to balance technological innovation with regulatory compliance, cybersecurity and competitive dynamics. Investments in our portfolio and digital transformation will be key to staying competitive, resilient and relevant for our customers. For Wholesale, this is particularly important as our partners rely on us to provide reliable, innovative and scalable digital services. By embracing AI-driven developments, we strengthen our position in the ecosystem and empower our customers to innovate faster.
Outlook
We anticipate that our investments in innovative connectivity building blocks, global connectivity partnerships and NL-ix will continue to yield positive results. The mobile and sponsored roaming segments are expected to drive continued growth, having already enabled strong service revenue growth last year. The broadband's performance in broadband is expected to be more challenging into next year given the base development in 2025 and the current line loss run-rate.
