After having extended the period of exclusive negotiations opened in mid-April by 48 hours the day before, the four players finally found common ground on Saturday June 6, 2026, including a potential additional price of up to 650 million euros at the closing of the operation – hoped for in the second half of 2027 – and the assurance given to the employees of the taken over SFR that their employment would be guaranteed until the beginning of 2029, they detailed in a joint press release.
This transaction represents “one of the largest industrial operations in Europe in the telecommunications sector”, underline the companies, while an unprecedented reconfiguration is looming with a return to three operators in France. It still remains subject to examination by the competition authorities and, “at this stage, there is no certainty that this operation will be carried out”, specify the groups in their press release.
According to the memorandum of understanding, Bouygues Telecom will pay 42% of the sale price, Free-Groupe Iliad 31% and Orange 27%, through the acquisition of shares in the company SFR. In terms of asset distribution, the Bouygues group subsidiary would notably gain the “B2B” segment of SFR, that is to say the offers dedicated to professionals, as well as part of its general public activities (i.e. around 6.4 million mobile and landline customers).
Free would inherit some 6 million customers of the RED by SFR offer, as well as nearly two million customers of its consumer activity, while Orange would be allocated around 4.9 million customers. The three buyers also plan to share the frequencies currently operated by SFR.
In total, the turnover of the scope concerned by the operation reached 8 billion euros in 2025. Bouygues Telecom would take the lion’s share of this amount (52%), ahead of Iliad (27%) and Orange (21%), which must be content with a smaller portion due to its dominant position on the market.
Subscriber migration
Before that, “the migration of millions of subscribers, infrastructures and systems constitutes a multi-year industrial program”, indicated the operators, who are aiming for “significant synergies” and assure that these gains will make it possible to “strengthen (their) investment capacities”.
In a separate reaction, the French Minister of the Economy, Roland Lescure, estimated that “this announcement marks a major and decisive step for a structuring operation which concerns the entire French and European telecoms sector”. “It must now be the subject of an in-depth examination by the competent competition authorities, who will be responsible for assessing with the greatest rigor its consequences on the market, the diversity of the offer, as well as on the competitive balance,” he added.
“This announcement constitutes an important step” for SFR, indicated the CEO of Altice France, Arthur Dreyfuss, and the CEO of SFR, Mathieu Cocq, in an internal email addressed to the company’s employees and consulted by AFP. They also specify that it is “a complex process, involving listed companies, which requires patience and a lot of rigor”, and that the three buyers are committed to opening a social dialogue with the trade union organizations representing SFR.
For his part, the general director of the Iliad group, Thomas Reynaud, welcomed in a press release “good news for Free, but also for the French telecommunications market”, previously disrupted in 2012 by his group when it became the fourth mobile operator in the country.
