Bouygues Telecom, Free-iliad Group and Orange entered exclusive negotiations with Altice France on 17 April to buy SFR's assets for a total enterprise value of €20.35bn, raising an offer of €17bn that Altice had rejected in October 2025.
Why Bouygues Telecom, Free-iliad Group and Orange is buying SFR (Altice France assets)
The consortium said the deal would preserve a highly competitive market while letting each operator scale up and strengthen its capacity to invest in French digital infrastructure. Each buyer said it had secured the financing needed.
Deal terms and financing
Bouygues Telecom would pay about 42% of the price, Iliad 31% and Orange 27%. Bouygues takes all of SFR's business customers and part of its consumer base; Iliad takes about six million RED by SFR customers and nearly two million other consumer customers; Orange takes about 4.9 million customers. Altice's stakes in XpFibre, UltraEdge and Altice Technical Services, and its overseas activities, are excluded. The June memorandum added an earn-out of up to €0.65bn, a downward price adjustment tied to SFR's performance, and break-up fees of between €0.1bn and €2bn.
Regulatory approvals and timing
Exclusivity, initially to 15 May, was extended to 5 June, and the memorandum was signed on 6 June. The operators have guaranteed jobs for transferred SFR staff until early 2029. The transaction must be cleared by competition authorities; France's economy minister has said it requires an in-depth review, and closing is expected in the second half of 2027 at the earliest.
Market context
The break-up would return France to three mobile network operators. Orange described it as one of the largest industrial transactions in European telecoms.
