[Audio Gap] from these statements as a result of risks relating to our company, which are described in our annual report on Form 20F for the year ended December 31, 2015, filed with the SEC. Under no circumstances should the inclusion of such forward-looking statements in this presentation be regarded as a representation or warranty by us or any other person with respect to the achievement of results set out in such statements or that the underlying assumptions used will, in fact, be the case. Therefore, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Except to the extent required by law, we will not update or revise any of these forward-looking statements, and they are made only as of today. Please refer to the full disclaimer behind me with respect to these estimates and forward-looking statements. That's done. Thank you. So the agenda for today, and I would also like to quickly introduce the speakers to you. First of all, Jean-Yves Charlier, CEO. Would you mind briefly standing up for the webcast, will open up by talking about the company, where it started and where it is going to; Andrew Davies, our Chief Financial Officer, will talk about the 2016 results but also the corporate finance initiatives going forward; Christopher Schlaeffer, our Chief Digital Officer, will then introduce VEON, the Internet platform -- the personalized Internet platform to you. Thereafter, Yogesh Malik, our Chief Technology Officer, will talk you through the technology initiatives that we have as a company. We will then break for about 20 minutes and have coffee and tea, back in the atrium before moving on with Alex Matuschka, our Chief Performance Officer. Then move on with Kjell Morten Johnsen, who is our Head of Russia and also Head of Major Markets. To finalize, we have Maximo Ibarra, the Chief Executive Officer of Wind Tre, the joint venture that we have since recent times in Italy. Jean-Yves Charlier will then make a few final remarks before we move into the Q&A session at the end of today's session by 5:30 roughly. Thereafter we can have cocktails and have a walk-in dinner for all of you to be together and have some informal exchange thereafter. With that, I would now like to hand over to Jean-Yves to start his presentation. Thank you.

Thank you, Bart. Good afternoon, and welcome to this important analyst and investor presentation for VimpelCom. Today, we are presenting not only a strong set of financial results for 2016 but also a number of strategic announcements as the transformation of VimpelCom accelerates. 18 months ago, we announced a strategy to profoundly transform VimpelCom. On one hand, our financial performance had been lackluster, our balance sheet had a number of issues. We were confronted with a number of structural dimensions. All of these matters, we needed to profoundly address. On the other hand, we felt that the telecom industry, and particularly the mobile industry, was at crossroads. Ultimately, we were simply not monetizing the tremendous growth in our network. So tremendous growth of data services and we felt that beyond the transformation of VimpelCom, we needed to think about profoundly reinventing our business and firmly positioning it in the digital space. Now we set out broadly 6 strategic initiatives, and I'll make a few comments on the progress that we've made over the last 18 months in terms of these major dimensions of our transformation program. First, we felt it was very important to address our structural issues. We formed a new partnership in Algeria to take our business Djezzy forward. We ultimately settled with the DOJ relating to FCPA matters dating back to our business in Uzbekistan. We've strengthened our position in GTH through the GTH bond and most recent share buyback. We've substantially improved the free float of the business with the successful sell-down of the Telenor shares in September of last year. And ultimately, we’ve profoundly strengthened our balance sheet. When we look at these past structural issues, in fact, today, we feel that we've addressed most of the issues that plagued VimpelCom in the past. The…

All right. Just short video about the essence, the DNA of this new VEON brand. So let me just summarize what we've achieved as a group. We're really taking VimpelCom, the telco, to VEON, the tech company. That's the journey that we've defined for this business. On one hand, we feel very much today that we've achieved a major milestone in transforming, in revitalizing this business. We've regained financial credibility, we've delivered a strong set of financial results, we've returned this business to organic growth, we've ultimately strengthened the balance sheet and addressed the structural issues of the past. On the other hand, we feel we have a huge opportunity to reinvent this business in emerging markets, an opportunity that is second to none, an opportunity, where we can position VEON as the unique platform for consumers offering new services from entertainment to financial services, offering us the opportunity to ultimately transform, reinvent our business from the brick-and-mortar model to a digital model. And with that, I want to thank you. Andrew?

Thank you. Okay. So I obviously drew the short straw coming on directly after the Spike Lee video. So I'm going to talk about 2016 results, the corporate finance initiatives and how's that progressed in 2016 and how we see them evolving for 2017 and then finally, I will conclude by talking about targets for 2017 and the dividend policy. Now within my presentation, I would normally cover each of the major markets and go through those in some detail. Given the broader context of today's event, I'm not going to do that. But all of the usual information is readily available in both the earnings release and actually as appendices to the presentation here. So in 2016, we achieved all of our targets, as Jean-Yves has already mentioned. So service revenue, back to consistent growth, 0.5 percentage point of growth year-on-year for the entire year. EBITDA grew by 1.4% organically, with a little bit of accretion in EBITDA margin. The CapEx to revenue ratio excluding CapEx related to the Warid integration was right in the middle of our guidance range at 17.4% and then that led to the 1 percentage point improvement in operating cash flow margins, and then we came in exactly in line with guidance on the leverage ratio at exactly 2x. Now in addition to that, as Jean-Yves already mentioned as well, we generated an underlying equity free cash flow of nearly $600 million in 2016, which already puts us more than 3/4 of the way to the long-term cash flow target that we had for 2018 of $750 million. So on service revenue, first of all -- so we continue to see on a full year basis reported revenues declining, driven exclusively by foreign exchange headwinds, which cost us roughly $1 billion of revenue for…

Thank you, Andrew. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I can never be more exciting than Andrew, Davies, and I think it's -- so just beautiful to listen to Andrew and what he has to tell us because it is really a representation of that transformation from within changing the whole of VimpelCom. We're doing that with 50,000 people who are committing to that change and that transformation, which is not always easy, but at the same time they're committing to shaping the totally new. The totally new in our regards is VEON, a personal Internet platform. We're trying to achieve nothing less than the change to Internet at large with the VEON platform, and I have the privilege to guide you through today what this platform is all about. After now being 12 months with the company that was quite some work to get here. It's kind of a first off show to you that you can really see what that new platform is about. Let me -- before I even go into the product, talk a bit about industry evolution with you. Because I think it's important to always step back a little bit. When you come to Barcelona and you're so overwhelmed by just another handset and a new next generation of networks, and it's always the same actually since decades. You always come to 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G. And we'll be sitting here in 20 years and talk about 9G, so that is the underlying trend and people will show new device portfolios for that industry, but what really happened is Internet, now being 25 years old actually, after Sir Tim Berners-Lee did the first connection in 1989, the year when the Berlin Wall came down, and then we experienced it as a connection actually to…

So far [indiscernible] actually.

He's Gabriel. And he's apparently given me a call on the platform. This is a free app-to-app call I got from Gabriel. So let's go in there. Missed call from Gabriel from yesterday and I actually need to call Gabriel back here very simply. Gabriel is my Global Head of Product Manager. He's -- it's here. So between Gabe and Mike, otherwise, it's -- doesn't work.

Yes. I'm coming on in right now. I'll be in the door in a second.

Cool. Come in. Gabe will show us. Here he is. So Gabriel is there. Just to show it that this actually does work in terms of a voice-over-IP call. We're actually quite proud that our voice-over-IP quality most likely is the best voice-over-IP quality of any messaging platform out there at the moment because we're using very advanced codecs. It's a very strong feature of our platform and it makes voice communication for real for our customers. So what did I show you so far? Let's briefly summarize in the short. I showed you a messaging app of course, so far, maybe not the disruptive yet, but what's disruptive about that messaging platform is the network integration. This platform is completely for free as I've said it. When you use the platform, you don't consume data. It always works. It is always on, even when you run out of a credit, which is for our prepaid customers in the emerging markets exactly, what they experience every day. They're running out of credit on the 22nd of a month and they don't top for days, but they can continue using VEON because it's free even when you're out of credit. Now you see network integration through a bit and you will immediately discover that the boundaries will be very much blurring between a text message and an SMS and chat. So there's no reason actually to stick to SMS in the future as a user because it is just messaging to each other. So I'm actually proud to announce that we're able beginning with today to integrate message out with SMS. So you can send a message, which will actually be delivered as an SMS with non-VEON customer, and that is bringing the iMessaging experience to every phone and every operating…

I go in the full screen. You see that it's perfect quality. It's dubbed in every language around the globe. It's paid for content, short-ful, bite-size, snack-able, shareable on a mobile platform. You can consume it out of my personal Internet platform. Now I stop that. I think the thing is clear. If we go to STUDIO+ here and see other series which they're going to produce. And I'm actually proud to announce to you today that we have a global partnership with Vivendi on STUDIO+ across all our markets with that high-quality content taking the video experience on the mobile handset to a next level. That is Vivendi. Now let's go back to the product. I was there. I think that's clear. You need to go. I think we're stuck somewhere guys. I unpause it -- so -- and I pause it again, right? Thank you. This my Global Head of Product, and he is also my development head, Gabriel Giordani. So you've seen already in the beginning that we kind of slipped over that picture here, which is in a frame called, "The Daily." That is a daily content stream, which we can produce in a personalized and contextual way where you could actually access content which is precurated for customer. So I'd like to go in that daily. And what I present to you in The Daily is a system of cards, where I can consume content again out of their messaging stream, like for instance a music content around Deezer or simply something around my favorite Cafe Del Mondo here or some m-commerce application. And I can go into that like Deezer and this is about [indiscernible] as greatest hit. It's a story. It's actually something editorial and my younger daughter, Emily, has told me about…

And with that, I'd like to hand over to Yogesh Malik, our CTO...

Extremely inspirational, extremely. Okay. So now we go 2 levels deeper on what is really going on below. So let's talk about differentiation because we always kind of talk about OTTs as contextual. So I will talk about concrete points on differentiation. The first one is how do we differentiate ourselves. By integration to the network, which means today when you are over a WhatsApp and you get a PSTN call, you do not really see anything, and the call gets blocked and the PSTN overrides it. We would be able to differentiate that by deep integration. Second, today if you have an SMS or iMessage, you are unable to send it to WhatsApp. We would be able to do that. And that is possible because of the deep integration of the message environment and of the network. That's the first thing. And this is not easy because actually a lot of people have forgotten what SMS is like and what the network flows are. So we're going back in and trying to make sure that we have full integration. Then the second thing is data. And we have a lot of data. As telcos, I think, we have so much of data that we cannot even imagine. Now the question is, most of this data is withheld within applications in IT stack. I'll just give an example of the data we have. This is all the data we carry today. You may say that these are all prepaid markets. How come that you have such an accurate data? In most of our markets, Pakistan, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Russia, we have gone through reverification processes. In Pakistan, actually we have a biometric ID as well on top of the data we have from the customer. So all this data is there…

Thank you, Yogesh, and thank you, speakers. Before that, I thought it was very exciting both on the results, but also on the outlook for the business going forward. We will have more to share with you after the break. For the people on the webcast call, you will be back in the room in 20 minutes, which is 10 past 4 CET. We will have refreshments at the end of the anteroom, so you can enter here. Thank you for the attention in first half. There will be an exciting second half in 20 minutes. Thank you for now. [Break]

For the second half, thank you. Please take your seats. We'll start again. And we will continue now with the next presentation, which is held by Alex Matuschka, our Chief Performance Transformation Officer. Alex? The floor is yours.

Thank you. So we had a break, we had coffee, and we had 2 exciting people presenting the new VEON and what we do technology-wise. But however, we need to finance it, and just adding costs on top makes no sense, destroys shareholder value. Let's talk a bit or let's double-click on costs. So first of all, the entire program is about restructuring, and I will show you many examples what we did during the last 12 to 14 months to improve our cost base. But at the other end, as you have seen already, it is a reinvestment which is taking place at the same time. And everything together should lead to meaningful dividend policy. Now I start as a lot of people started to tell you what the program is all about. And as everybody and the big companies in the world announced big programs to cut costs, they always concentrate on 3 pieces: the OpEx, for obvious reason; the CapEx; and the working capital. But what did we achieve? As you know, last year, we announced that by the end of 2018, our cost structure or our equity free cash flow will improve by $0.75 billion, and as we accelerated the program, we already achieved $588 million by the end of 2016, which brought us to the next level that we want to achieve: now more than $1 billion by the end of 2018. How do we get there? First of all, cutting costs alone doesn't work. We are coming from a civil servants environment, and we really need to reinvent ourselves. We need to implement a new operating model. Let me take you through the -- back to the past. VimpelCom, now I can say really VimpelCom the past, was consisting of 14 different operators, which…

Thank you very much, Alex. Thank you. I'm going to take you through a few things around Russia. I'm going to talk about why it's quite fun, why I'm pretty positive and excited about what we can do there and, of course, a little bit about what needs to change not only in the company but also in the industry, to give you some perspectives on that. And let me start by a couple of the things that we definitely have. And sitting here today, you have heard Alex talking about optimizing, cutting costs we are doing across the group. We have heard Yogesh talking about network, IT in many areas at the forefront of the industry. And of course, we have heard Christopher. We will return to Christopher a little bit later. What this tells us is that, as a group, we are working across the countries in a more mature way than previously. This is extremely important because we cannot succeed as individual opcos, whatever the size. We need the group to function as a group to succeed. Now other things to be excited about and to be interested in. We have, in the Russian markets, Beeline, 57 million customers out there. They have chosen us not only because we have the strongest brand in Russia. There is no doubt that Beeline, it's the strongest mobile brand in Russia. It is also the clearest in terms of its colors, has been and will continue to be. We have a good fixed position, stemming back also to the times of the Global Telecom acquisition. These are building blocks for the future. Now of course, working with our colleagues to optimize, super important to drive that kind of performance. The core business needs to change. The industry in Russia needs…

Thank you very much, yes, and...

Good luck.

I have to say that 3 out of 6 of my Supervisory Board members are sitting here. So I have to be extremely careful...

No pressure.

Right, so one of those is Kjell, Jean-Yves and Andrew. So -- okay, I'm not going to read the disclaimer. So it is there. So you can -- we can take, let me say, 1 minute in full silence, and you can read it or we can go right into the presentation. I think that we're going right into the presentation. Okay, let me start with the -- who we are. And this is the Wind Tre identity. Wind Tre, this is the name of the company, the joint venture between VimpelCom, now VEON, and Hutchison. And what is really interesting is that this company has had a quite long journey. I remember the first time that we -- I discussed or I was informed by shareholders that time of VimpelCom about this potential merger between 3 Italia and WIND in Italy, and it was December 2014. So that has been quite a long journey but quite successful journey because when we got finally the authorization from the European Union -- European Commission in September 2016, that the company was born in November 2016, there was a merger of the legal Italian entities in December 31, 2016, and now we are operating as we were one company. So the company name, Wind Tre, then I talk to you -- talk about the commercial brands later on. The mission, this is really important because it has been proven that most of the 50-50 joint ventures have not been very successful, but we have understood that there are, let me say, a lot of lessons that we learned. We had time to understand that properly. And the key success factor is to be really one and to do that in a superfast way, integrating emerging cultures and start operating as we are…

Thank you very much. I think that concludes at least the day in terms of the presentation. I think that we've given you really a full breadth of how, on one side, we're really transforming VimpelCom or the old VimpelCom, the telecom business side of the house. And on the other side how we're really... [Technical Difficulty]

[Operator Instructions]

Ultimately to the strategy going forward. So I'll invite Andrew on stage with me. We'll open up to Q&A. The whole management team is here. We've got a few other individuals of the management team. We've got Scott Dresser, our Legal Counsel, there in the back; we've Jon Eddy, who heads up Emerging Markets. And they will be ready to answer some of your questions if they are specific. So why don't we start, Bart, with Q&A in the room. Or you're going to give us an introduction to Q&A?

Very good. Thank you. Yes, just a little introduction in terms of -- we have sufficient time for the Q&A. So let's agree that you ask 1 or 2 questions, not 5 in a single go, first of all. Secondly, once we've done a few questions here, then maybe questions on the webcast that we can also take from the webcast. With that, I would like to open up the floor and to get the first question. Ivan, would you like to?

May I ask you?

[Operator Instructions]

Are you planning to displace the existing incumbents in this space like WhatsApp or any other messengers which is out there. Aren't you afraid of cannibalization, right? And generally speaking, what kind of investment do you foresee for this? Is it $100 million? Or it can be much, much more. So I think that's something that worries both investors and myself and analysts in general. And the second question is on the dividends. How exactly is it [indiscernible] to the free cash flow? So if, for example, this year, it's $0.23 of about $600 million, do we need to think about this as proportionate increase with the free cash flow? So proportionate increase to [indiscernible] free cash flow will be given the same increase of dividends or something else?

Do you want to start with dividends?

Yes, why not. [indiscernible] so we wanted dividend policy to be stable and progressive, but the [indiscernible] free cash flow evolves and so will the dividend payment, but you shouldn't bank on, if we guide to a 10% improvement on whatever in equity free cash flow that you can therefore, just simplistically assume a 10% increase in the dividend payout either, okay. So it will be progressive. It will be based on, but not directly linked to.

Okay. On the first part of question, do we risk cannibalization? Yes, is the answer. And our strategy is, in fact, to cannibalize part of our business rather than have others cannibalize, ultimately, our business. But as just Christopher took us through, we see this equation as not a risk management equation. We think that this is potentially a growth equation for the business as well as an opportunity to fundamentally reengineer further our cost structure and the way that we operate ultimately as a business. So we're looking for new revenue streams on one hand, but on the other hand we're looking for changes in our cost model. Changes in distribution costs as we go online for everything, changes in customer support costs, as we deal with things online versus in the brick-and-mortar matter. So that's how we think of this ultimate equation. In terms of how we intend to compete, Christopher, do you want to say a couple of words there against the OTTs?

[indiscernible] differentiation against these midstream platforms. So let's recall where they stand at the moment. These are midstream platforms like but [indiscernible] they don't have these 2 things. First of all, interestingly, they don't have the access to the contextual data which we have, that is the irony of the telecom industry. And Yogesh has shown that chart with a context and richness of that we do have in order to work together we have these services that is simply something others cannot do in the messaging space. But of course, that cannibalization element around being truly free and our free message around data connectivity is the key differentiating element in the beginning to break into that phalanx of messaging services. What's important, when we had taken up in initiating in the marketplace that we create that element of virality [ph], what we're doing here and didn't talk about that, we're putting in, in place some members program. So if you join the Italian app, in the verge of the first 6 pics you can add your 6, 7, 8 friends or dearest colleagues or family members through your personal network, no matter where they are and you incentivize, you're getting at the moment 1 free gigabyte, literally for adding a friend up to 10 friends that's possible. That is very simple to create these micro networks which are there. You've asked also the question of investment. And this clearly is not an investment, not for $500 million. If you look at 2016, it's very low, double-digit U.S. million numbers what we invested. We roughly operate our internal competencies at the moment. If 120 people in product management and software very concentrated have been able to pull this out, but we will be increasing that team basically to 2.5x that size during the course of 2017.

Very good. Next question, please? Dalibor?

My question is a follow-up on the earlier one on the cannibalization item, the revenue economics of this. So essentially, I don't know if you can give out how much of your total service revenue is domestic and potentially be under threat. This is the first part. Secondly, what exactly are you going to be offering for free? Is it video as well? Or what type of content will actually be potentially for -- would be free and therefore cannibalizing the others? The third one, I'm sorry, I'm probably asking two more, which is still a part of one if you don't mind, Bart.

No, no [ph].

The third one is, what sort of competitive responses are you expecting to this? I was just reading literally a couple of minutes ago, that MTS is going to be launching in Russia free mobile data sponsored by advertising, I don't know if it's a response to this. Or whether it's a separate initiative. But it looks like that competitors will also try to revamp their models. So how much -- and then fourth one is what -- I mean, I understand that the platform is quite unique and difficult to replicate. Nonetheless, you've managed to do it in a very short time. I assume that if some of your competitors throw some money at it, they could possibly achieve some of these things as well. I -- perhaps not, but I just wanted to see, is it really now a gainful time for you where you want to get this momentum very quickly. And if you don't get it in 6 months, 9 months, and then there's a threat that someone else may be entering this space? Should we see it like that? Or you think that you have something more unique, more sustainable that even if it takes 1 year, 1.5 years, that you're still okay, and it's unlikely to be replicated?

Christopher, you want to take some of those questions? Maybe I can [indiscernible] MTS and how Russian operators might replicate this.

I'm happy to comment on these. Should I go there? [indiscernible] because they are key questions, of course. First of all, what is for free. It's a clear delineation in the user experience. So when you're in the VEON system and you, as a user, do recognize that you are in there for free, that includes playing a music track or playing a certain trailer in a video when you're still in that. But you'll clearly see that you'll leave the ecosystem and, for instance, will go to a YouTube stream outside of the VEON platform and end up in YouTube in that moment, you will be charged for data. So that is very clearly indicated for users. We are very diligent on how far we go because we are actually designing that user experience to get with the partners are actually content is displayed in the messaging experience. How you could order a taxi or book a table in such a messaging experience. So that is the limit of that. Are we afraid of a competitive move? I think we are at a speed with that company, and a clarity of also the intention of the shareholder to transform that business that it would take telcos as we know them 1.5 years of debate whether that is all at all feasible. So I think we're going to run now, and it's true. This is not about a linear growth. We need to really achieve viral growth in the very short term in the first 18 to 24 months with that platform. It's not something which you can postpone into 5, 6 years out from here. So that are key answers.

Kjell, any perspective on Russia, and how you see VEON position against the others?

Well, I think, what I could add to what Christopher was saying is that, of course, everything can be copied in this world. There's nothing that can't be copied over time. So this is more about setting up a new platform that will be evolving over time. So what we will launch in Q2 2017 will be exciting. But of course, when we work on that for the next 6, 9 months, 12 months working with more partners, getting more offerings on this platform, we're creating a position and a culture in the company that is on the move all the time. And if you want to catch up by copying, I don't think it's a very easy concept. Yogesh knows how long it has taken to build up the first class DMP platform that we have. The data management platform of Beeline is good. It's not something that's going to be ready in 9 months. It [indiscernible] is ready. We can use it today. So setting all these things in motion, tying it together and having the culture of constant improvement that we're going to build there, is going to give us a bit head start. And then, of course, sometimes you will see people trying to come up with something to create a bit of noise, so maybe it doesn't look so exciting what the innovator is coming up with, but that's normal. And advertise, sponsor data, I don't want to speak negatively about our competition. But I do remember there was a time when you can have voice calls, so you could be interrupted in all kinds of ways, so you get it free. It's giving away value in that sense, I don't find that super exciting, to be honest. So we want to get people on board because they see the value every day of being on the platform.

Can I make one more comment, please, because I think that might be interesting for you as an analyst and investors. I came back from the software industry after 7 years being a serial entrepreneur and was quite hesitant to reenter telco scheme knowing that and I was in there for 12 years before another big telco decades ago, already I'm an old man, but it's very important to note for you that we're only doing this in terms of innovation. This is not like a big telco operator, who has 2,500 R&D projects and development projects. And then does advertise something on a fair like Barcelona. When we took this decision together for VEON, we stopped any other project in the company. This is like a start of a massive Silicon Valley startup, which is crowding around a single mission, creating VEON. And we're announcing today to you that we're rebranding a company VEON and the name of their platform is also VEON. So it's like to give you just the sense of how radical this endeavor is for the company. This is not an afterthought. That is not nothing at the sidelines or something where somebody goes into an advertising, messaging app somewhere #17 of my R&D project. This is it for us. We want to break the paradigm. We want to play on par with the heavyweights in that industry and create something entirely new for users out there.

Nick [indiscernible].

Nick Delfas from Redburn. Two questions, fairly simple one, first of all, on the Italian dividends. Is the test every 6 months, every 12 months? Is it payable on a rolling 12-month basis quarterly? And then just to get back on VEON, the other question. If I'm a WIND subscriber, and I haven't recharged for months, is it still free? If I'm a Vodafone subscriber, what aspect of it is free? If you could just explain a little bit more on the charging model?

Dividends.

Italy dividends. So I'll address your question and I'll make a couple of other observations as well in part of that. So first of all, it's not actually correct to just talk about them as dividends to start off with, right? I think you’ll recall when we announced the transaction that we basically -- we kept over EUR 5 billion of the shareholder loan that previously was in place in the old hedge structure in place. So for the first several years distributions from that Italian joint venture will actually be in the form of repayment on the shareholder loan, which is, first of all, tax efficient. And secondly, we don't have to go through the bureaucratic process of having audited financial statements, formally declaring a dividend, et cetera, et cetera. And therefore, as part of that, all we need to do is put 2 successive quarters past the relevant leverage threshold test and then we can just make dividend distributions as and when we want to. And to be clear, the leverage test is the only thing that's important. So there is no other structural limitations, which exist within the financing documentation within that JV either. I mean, when we did is 3 rounds of refinancing of WIND from early '14 through to Q1 of '15, we cleaned up all the documentation and made the debt structure completely fit for purpose within the new joint venture.

Free [ph]. It's free, yes, and it's also free if you don't top up whether you're alluding to the creating of fair usage and abuse, we'll be careful about that as we go along. But at the moment, we really opened the gate in order to get this going. But we will be managing that process also in terms of how we create the user experience and how far we go in, including actually certain consumer experiences and where you hand over to an application outside. So this is a very important topic. And as a Vodafone customer, you're out of that paradigm at the moment in Italy. So you can use the VEON application, of course, but not free of data. So you're incurring data charges as Vodafone and here's an incentive, which we also use, of course, in converting customers because we have to acknowledge [ph] because the VEON user on another network to connect him and pull him in and that is why our market share gain most likely out of VEON.

[indiscernible]

Just a follow-up on your answer around the acquisition path from VEON. If I'm a Vodafone customer in Italy, presumably...

I hope you're not a Vodafone customer.

Well, I'm not an Italian and I'm not a Vodafone customer, but presumably the experience will not be the same as when I'm a WIND customer because you don't have all the network information. So how would the user experience look versus what you just demonstrated earlier? And then you mentioned during your presentation a significant reduction in the cost of gross adds from, let's say, EUR 25 to EUR 9 or EUR 8. You need to have -- in particular, there are some verification process that you need to follow. I'll be very interested if you can talk us through the path through verification, if I go through VEON versus going to a shop in order to migrate?

And we will do that to get a maximum [ph] on the verification process. So user experience for a WIND customer is, as I've shown it, starting in the second quarter. To date, it's only the messaging experience, which has already produced after only 3 weeks of advertising more than 1 million of downloads. So that's fair. For a competitor's network customer, you can still access the content, of course, I've shown, like Vivendi and Studio+, music tracks, et cetera. But you're reaching certain limitations on the contextual Internet services. Of course, our identity and the data on file will develop in VEON even without a network connection because you'd get the customer consent of using maybe location and with each transaction, you are starting to create a profile and can segment, et cetera. But it is limited in comparison when you have the fully fledged access to network data, which Yogesh has shown on his chart and that is the differentiation. I would say you in the beginning maybe lacking 20% or 30% on that element, but we will also be able to do a lot. And that brings me to the on-boarding process you're asking in Italy. First of all, it's a very simple process in Italy. You're automatically detecting your phone number, the MSISDN, and then you just have to confirm that this is you and that your name is right. We ask you for your e-mail. We're asking for your payment details. And we're giving an incentive to leave us the payment details. In the case of Italy, you get a 10% discount on your telco bundle. In the first cohorts of uses after a couple of weeks we've a conversion rates of significant double-digit of users giving us payment details, which is a revolution, it's not easy and then we go into the consent you need in Italy. So we were heavily starting the legal environment in Italy, what you need there in terms of -- do you need a password, yes or not, to access service like that, what are the consents on data. But please, Maximo, help me out a bit, you might even better understand to what the question is about.

Your question is more on what we call the e-commerce side. So the fact that you can buy the SIM card and then you can manage your digital onboarding without passing by the retail distribution footprint. This is one of the developments that VEON will have. So the full digital onboarding without passing by the retail footprint. And when you look at it, then you will notice that as a market standard average, the acquisition costs are approximately between EUR 20 and EUR 25. These will drop significantly because then you will have the logistic costs. And maybe you will have just something more in terms of digital customer recognition. But Christopher is perfectly right saying that this is going to be become a low digit just one single-digit acquisition cost. But that process is something that will be managed by VEON. At the moment, it's important to create a right engagement to capture the credit card, to manage the contents in terms of revenue sharing because it's also important based on our other question that has been made in terms of revenue cannibalization on one hand. There can be some revenue cannibalization, but on the other hand there is a significant potential of value creation, thanks to discounts and partnerships. So again, the real key success factor is customer experience, the way it is managed right now, and this is something that customers are now really stating and commenting is that you can do everything just in -- with only just 1, 2 steps. This is actually important. It has to be easy and, at the same time, has to have all the most important differentiating contents moving forward, not only my account [indiscernible] automatic top up or just normal top up.

No worries, everybody will get a chance, we have time. I had already preselected Herve.

A question again on VEON, and in terms of the tariff policy, I mean, do you see VEON as an opportunity as the time same you'll launch a platform, let's say, for example, in Russia, as changing your tariff policies, especially on the prepaid, and on the low hand of the prepaid. So do you think it could be a tool that can be used potentially as well to change and make other players change their tariff policy? And I'm particularly thinking of Russia as a one? The second question is, in terms of the rollout in terms of speed of those rollout into different countries. I guess, you had some talk already with some of the regulator, but those are free rating pricing. I was wondering, is there some countries where the regulator is not -- is more difficult for you to point that model out? And finally, just why did you go for a soft launch in Italy? What was the reason behind it?

Okay. Let me try and maybe take the questions in reverse. So soft launch in Italy was really about testing and gaining knowledge about an alpha version of the product rather than waiting basically to have a full-fledge release that Christopher demonstrated. I think we're breaking really the paradigm of not doing these 2- or 3-year developments and then rolling out something. Since we've launched in Italy, I don't know how many releases we've rolled out, 7 releases. We're getting really into the Silicon Valley, OTT model, leaving behind really the telco model of quarters, if not years to do development work, all right? And so going into alpha/beta versions for us is absolutely critical to gain that expertise and gain the knowledge in the marketplace. So I think that's -- to answer how crucial it was to start, in fact, in one of the markets and our expectation and our objective is obviously to roll this out as many markets as we can across the globe. Regulation, you want to take that or..

Absolutely. So of course, the Internet neutrality or net neutrality debate is something, which is very close to that discussion of 0 rating, 0 crediting. The most relevant debate for us on that is in Europe, and I think it's important to have that debate because this is about an open platform. So what is going on in Europe is something we're watching and participating, but we also want to shape that development. And that is something we're clearly aware of. Outside Europe, as you know, the discussion is not that advanced in our markets. On pricing and portfolio, Jean, would you like to say something on Russia?

Before we go there, let me just make 1 or 2 comments to introduce the topic. But what's really important for us as we go all-out digital is to fundamentally simplify our tariff structure and that has huge implications in terms of positioning VEON in the marketplace and our telecom brands, but also huge implications in terms of the transformation of our legacy IT systems. Because part of the reason that the industry has such high IT cost to revenue is because the inherent complexity that we've built into these systems and the system stack that we're rolling out, is predicated on the basis that we're going to profoundly transform and simplify the tariffing structure that we have out there. As Kjell said, and we'll repeat around data pricing, which we feel is absolutely appropriate. So can you perhaps take the Russian angle where you've had tens of thousands of tariffs, right? And maybe Maximo can pick it up in what we've done already in Italy around the 2 tariffs that are absolutely center now to the business?

Yes, I think this is...

Russia first.

Sorry. In the meantime...

Let me first of all, on what Jean-Yves said, simplification, cleanup, absolutely important. We have taken out 90% already. There's more to be done. This is just something that has to done by every telco. We've come quite a long way. But back to the pricing structures in the Russian market. There is a secular trend in the Russian market from pay as you go to bundles. More and more people want to go and have a bundled relationship with the provider. And Beeline started that one, that push quite some time ago. And it's the leader also in bundle-ization. We had paid a little bit of cost for that in terms of our interconnect. But we're clearly leading that secular trend. And that is something that we're going to continue with. We think the market is going that way. When it comes to the VEON launch, for me that is much more about creating a personal -- or private into the platform where we can drive new value to the customer base. I think the initial stages, which as Christopher describes, the key attributes that basically can be always on, is super important. But going down the road, I'm the believer that the whole marketplace dynamic partnerships is going to be the real driver for people to fight them to not being on the platform. To put this together, that is what I want to do with VEON. I don't see it as the way to transform the pricing structures. But we do put a lot of emphasis on driving data-centric pricing. Those of you who read Russian newspapers will see that, that is in the media all the time now. It's being spoken about and we have pushed that because we think it's the right thing to do, not only for ourselves, for the industry and for society because it's absolutely unfair that heavy users drive so much network loads that you have to build more and more capacity instead of spending your money on building coverage, which is much better for society and also much better for us in terms of being able to offer good services. So back to your question, I don't see VEON as a primary driver for reshaping the prepaid market in Russia.

[indiscernible] pricing simplification are really tied to each other. We decided to launch 2 prepaid tariffs, just only 2 prepaid tariffs, for all new gross additions, for new acquisitions in Italy. So the combination of a new customer downloading VEON is simplifying at a very big extent the offer portfolio in the market. Of course, this does not mean that if you are a customer of WIND that has been a customer for a long time that has another tariff plan that wants to utilize VEON, then, of course, that customer can download the application and use all the functionalities and features that are included. But it's important because the process of simplification is always based on the concept that customers really love the best customer experience where they cannot and they don't have to think. So big allowances, very clear, very transparent. The possibility to check those on the account that is embedded in the VEON application. And at the same time having the possibility to get more services, thanks to the contextual market that Christopher was explaining before. This is integrated network. It's integrated with the CRM of the company. So you can really get all this information and that information is ready for whatever that needs to be upselling initiatives we want to play.

Very good. [indiscernible] next question. Feel free to ask other topics as well. It's really catching the attention, which is good, but feel free [indiscernible] I promise you one.

Roman Arbuzov from UBS. So for the sake of asking something else, I will start with a cash flow question. You mentioned you want to significantly increase the cash flow that you upstream from the opcos to go beyond the $0.5 billion. So can you just give us maybe a little bit more granularity where you expect additional cash to come from? And then maybe just as part of that answer, you could touch up on Ukraine and Uzbekistan that you mentioned last quarter, that would be helpful. And then, I've got -- unfortunately, I do have one more on VEON, but after this.

[indiscernible] the VEON question, too, as well.

Yes, sorry to labor the point. But it still feels like there is a dislocation between VEON and the emerging markets portfolio of VimpelCom. You do have the Italian business, which is very different, and you're also operating in different tier markets, right? I mean, Kjell was talking about good old data monetization in Russia. And it's just -- it's hard to reconcile it with VEON. So can you just maybe provide a little bit more granularity whether you expect VEON to operate in profoundly new ways in emerging markets versus what we have in Italy?

Okay. So let's do the cash upstreaming first. So yes, as I said, we've had an excess of $500 million of dividends declared by the opcos in 2016. And that’s across the range of opcos and not -- Russia's broadly only half of that total, right, so there’s Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine, has completed the repayment of the shareholder loan that we put in place back in February 2015 to fund both license acquisition and... [Audio Gap] [Technical Difficulty]

[Operator Instructions] Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience. However, this concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.