Bouygues Telecom, Free-Groupe iliad and Orange signed an agreement with Altice France to acquire most of SFR’s assets, valuing the operation at €20.35 billion enterprise value.
The transaction framework is a move from indicative terms to a formalized agreement, with client, telecom asset and frequency allocation plus an organized interim period.
Scope, excluded assets, and how the interim structure works
The agreement covers most of SFR’s assets, but it also excludes specific Altice France items, including XP Fibre, UltraEdge, Altice Technical Services, ACS/Intelcia and overseas activities.
For assets that are common or not directly transferred, the plan is to house them in SFR SA, owned in equal shares by the three operators for a duration of at least 30 months.
Who gets what: Bouygues Telecom, Free and Orange allocations
The effort allocation among Bouygues Telecom, Free and Orange is 42%, 31% and 27%, respectively.
Bouygues Telecom is set to take the most structural perimeter, including SFR Business (about €1.2 billion in revenue), around 3.8 million mobile customers (including Prixtel) and 2.6 million fixed customers. The perimeter also includes part of B2B fixed infrastructure, SFR’s mobile network in non-dense areas (already mutualized under the Crozon agreement), and part of the FTTH network in very dense areas. The transaction is framed as enabling Bouygues Telecom to scale up fixed services and strengthen its Bouygues Telecom Enterprises unit.
Free is slated to receive more than 8 million additional subscribers, with the entire RED by SFR customer base totaling 6 million clients. That RED base includes 1.6 million retail customers under the SFR brand and 400,000 SMB customers under the same brand. Free would also take 50 MHz of additional frequencies and reach nearly 31 million subscribers in France.
Orange would take about 4.9 million customers, including part of SFR’s retail customer base and the RÉGLO, Syma and Coriolis MVNOs. The Orange portfolio is described as about 4 million mobile customers and 1 million fixed broadband customers, alongside 47 MHz of additional frequencies.
Timeline and regulatory conditions for the SFR deal
Exclusive negotiations were announced in mid-April, and the agreement was signed on 6 June. Employee representative bodies must be consulted before the signing of the definitive documentation, which is expected in the second half of 2026.
The project must then obtain regulatory approvals, including merger-control review, with closing expected in the second half of 2027.
Beyond filings, the consortium must convince regulators that moving from four to three major operators would not worsen competition. It also has to organize migration for several million customers, separate customer databases, and integrate information systems, frequencies, networks and distribution channels while ensuring service continuity.
The consortium committed to guaranteeing jobs for employees of the acquired perimeter until the start of 2029, either through continued employment or redeployment offers.