Mobile in France: no more blocking of ARCEP for a return to 3 operators, merger to come?

The president of the regulatory authority of
Télécoms de France, better known by the acronymARCEPa
recently been interviewed by the newspaper Le Monde. On this occasion, he
discussed the efforts made last year by French operators in
matters of investment, and affirmed that he no longer held such a closed position
only in 2016 on a possible merger of two large operators. This statement
falls a few weeks afterrumor coming from
from Bloomberg, according to which Bouygues Telecom would like to get its hands
on SFR. All this would indicate apossible return to 3 operators
adults in France, in the months or year to come:

Sébastien Soriano, president of ARCEP, indeed indicated that in 2016, he
rejected any desire to merge operators, wanting to push them at the time to
prioritize their investment mission.

And ARCEP's efforts paid off, since in 2017, Orange, SFR, Free and
Bouygues Telecom invested in total9.6 billion euros,
excluding the purchase of frequencies, which remains a record in this area.

Therefore respecting the majority of their commitments, operators could
be authorized by ARCEP to make arrangements in the event of a desire to merge
two of them. Despite everything, and Sébastien Soriano makes it clear, such
operation should be beneficial for the country and users, and not
only for shareholders.

We can imagine that the president will take care of this before seeing Bouygues
buy SFR for example, or create another type of alliance between two
current competitors.

The fact remains that the Bouygues-Altice association is the most likely to date,
giventhe information
delivered by Boomberg last month.

Source

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