Reuters reported that Patrick Drahi was in discussions with European satellite operator Eutelsat about a possible takeover. A deal that would have seen one of his investment vehicles take direct control of the Paris-listed company. "An offer for Eutelsat, which has a market value of €2.3 billion ($1.96 billion) and is backed by public investor Bpifrance with a 20% stake," according to Reuters. This was rejected by the satellite operator as being too low.

The man recently received regulatory approval to take telecoms group Altice Europe private after its minority shareholders approved his bid to buy the company. In June, he had taken a 12.1% stake in UK telecoms operator BT Group using the newly created Altice UK vehicle. According to unnamed sources, the billionaire had no intention of merging Eutelsat with his telecoms and media assets and would like to keep the French company in a separate holding company.

For its part, incumbent Eutelsat - since 1977 - recently bought nearly 24% of UK rival OneWeb for $550m - the biggest deal since CEO Rodolphe Belmer took office in 2016.

 Read the article

Source : Le Monde Informatique

SFR's parent company, Altice France, announced on 20 September that it had reached an agreement to acquire 100% of Coriolis Télécom. 415 million: an initial purchase price of 298 million euros and a deferred payment of 117 million euros. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to be completed in the first half of 2022.

Coriolis Télécom is a French independent operator, founded more than 30 years ago. It has a customer base of more than 500,000 and 30,000 businesses in fixed and mobile services in France.

This takeover will allow SFR to benefit from Coriolis' expertise, partnerships and distribution networks to complete its offers.

Patrick Drahi's group is not new to takeovers. Indeed, it has already acquired Réglo Mobile last May. The virtual mobile operator, which belonged to Leclerc, enabled Altice to increase its customer base by 770,000 subscribers.

Thanks to these two acquisitions, the total number of consumer subscribers increased by a little over 1.2 million customers.

The concentration movement in telecoms continues. While SFR has acquired two other virtual operators, Bouygues Telecom has also acquired Euro Information Telecom (NRJ Mobile, CIC Mobile, Auchan Telecom...).

 Read the article

Source : alloforfait

Last November, the European Commission approved the acquisition of Covage by SFR FttH. The company is now called Xp Fibre and has a portfolio of 7 million fiber optic connections. It includes 24 Public Initiative Networks (PINs), operated under public service delegations (PSDs); five AMEL zones and two proprietary networks; and 2.6 million outlets in AMII zones.

Its role remains broadly the same as that of SFR FttH, i.e., network deployment, operation and marketing of its own outlets, or through public partnerships, depending on the areas to be equipped.

In detail, SFR FttH already had 5.5 million outlets throughout France, notably through 16 public service partnerships, three AMEL zones and the AMII zone. With this acquisition, Xp Fibre now has 8 DSPs and 4 proprietary networks (including two AMEL).

Each of the deployment areas will benefit from a fiber optic network open to all commercial operators, Xp Fibre being an infrastructure operator. The general public, businesses and local authorities will all be able to subscribe to the access provider of their choice.

"The new entity, made up of the assets of SFR FttH and those resulting from the acquisition of Covage, gives rise to a new, even more ambitious player in the field of fiber for territories and a key player for commercial operators," commented Lionel Recorbet, President of Xp Fibre.

The capital of the new entity remains composed of the Canadian fund OMERS (one of the main defined benefit pension plans in Canada), Altice France and the infrastructure funds of the Axa and Allianz groups, as was that of SFR FttH.

 Read the article

Source : Clubic

Altice, via its SFR FTTH branch, entered into exclusive negotiations a year ago to acquire 100% of the wholesale operator Covage.

The Association of Alternative Telecom Operators was quick to express its concern, because this merger was not "without raising profound questions about the preservation of an already fragile competitive intensity in the business and local authority market".

The European Commission "has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed acquisition of Covage by SFR FTTH, a company jointly controlled by Altice, Allianz and Omers. The clearance is subject to full compliance with a series of commitments offered".

Two commitments are made by SFR FTTH:

• "The sale to a suitable purchaser of 25 subsidiaries and assets corresponding to Covage's "optical local loop"" business in the territory of 30 public institutions. These subsidiaries and assets consist of FttO networks and represent in total approximately 95% of Covage's FttO business.
• "The offer of a transitional service contract, including access to all assets and services required to operate the divested business under competitive conditions for a period of time allowing SFR FTTH to become fully independent".

In conclusion, the Commission states that "the final commitments address the competition concerns identified by the Commission with respect to the acquisition of Covage by SFR FTTH and have been substantially improved following comments provided by market participants. The Commission has therefore concluded that the proposed transaction, as modified by the commitments, no longer raises competition concerns".

 Read the article

Source : Next Inpact

Organized by Mon Territoire Numérique every year in March in Deauville, the RIP Estates General finally took place in video format. The meeting of public initiative networks made it possible to gauge the impact of the health crisis on the very high-speed broadband projects carried by local authorities.

At the end of March, InfraNum warned that a complete halt to the fibre optic deployment projects would be a "catastrophe" likely to cause 12 months of inertia. Today, the Federation of Digital Infrastructure Industrialists is breathing - a little. Its president, Étienne Dugas, says "We have worked on the ordinances, on the various decrees with more or less success" in order to "avoid the complete shutdown of the industrial tool, which is done".

Overall, activity fell, on average, to around 30% of nominal production during containment. This made it possible to keep the industrial facilities in operation, although the situation varied greatly from one region to another.

Today, the time has come for a return to load: 50% activity last week, 70% this week. At any rate, these are the figures announced by Julien Denormandie, the French Minister for Urban Affairs and Housing, who has been in charge of HSBB issues since 2017. But Etienne Dugas warns that they should be taken with caution: "In terms of productivity, we are still far from the rates we could have had previously".

This observation is corroborated by Lionel Recorbet for SFR FttH: "We are going to have a lot, a lot of difficulties to get back to 100%". Cyril Luneau, Director of Community Relations at Orange, also warns that a return to pre-crisis fibre deployment levels "is not for now". The Covid episode will have "a serious and profound impact on the calendars and milestones for the end of this year, and no doubt for 2022", i.e. the deadlines for the operator's commitment in the AMII zone.

The operators therefore warn that at this stage it is difficult to quantify the additional delays. Pascal Rialland, President of Covage, nevertheless risks predicting a postponement of deployment of "4 to 6 months in 2021" for the 75,000 fibre optic lines that Covage was to deploy in 2020 in Calvados.

Schedule slippages will be inevitable and consequently delays in commercialization could ultimately weigh on the economy of the projects carried by the communities. As will the more immediate additional costs associated with health precautions.

It is not possible at this stage to put a figure on these additional costs. InfraNum has also commissioned an impact study for the end of the month. The Federation of Industrialists intends to use this work as a basis for the recovery plan promised by the government for next September.

While waiting for a clearer picture of the impact of the health crisis, the participants in the Estates General of the RIPs preferred to insist on other levers for accelerating deployment in order to respond to the digital impatience.

On the industrial side, the immediate cash needs of companies in the sector were highlighted in order to be able to continue their activity. At the height of the crisis, infrastructure operators have multiplied initiatives to relieve the cash flow of their subcontractors (reductions in payment deadlines, advances and other subsidies). Now, the idea is to "put more agility" in the payments of France THD subsidies to local authorities, Julien Denormandie announces.

But the President of the French Telecoms Federation, Arthur Dreyfuss, tempers "the answer cannot only be public money". Beyond new financial help, the Secretary General of Altice France is waiting for "all those little everyday obstacles" to the deployment of fibre to be lifted. Many grievances have been voiced for years that many HSBB actors would like to see finally heard. In this exceptional situation, "we have to beat the iron", Patrick Chaize sums up. By making, for example, digital infrastructures an essential asset, argues the Senator of Ain and President of Avicca. An approach allowing the deployment to overcome some of these obstacles, also believes Arthur Dreyfuss, deploring that "we do not benefit from the right that gas or electricity enjoy.

An idea that does not convince Julien Denormandie, for whom such a status could be misunderstood by the French deprived of a good connection. The minister prefers to go through other texts for certain operational advances to which he says he is "open". On the other hand, concerning the very pressing question of co-ownership, the minister kicks the ball, referring to the "balances" of the Elan law. Operators and local authorities have therefore not finished with this painstaking work.

 Read the article

Source : DegroupNews

After Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Ireland, the European telecommunications infrastructure giant Cellnex is setting out to conquer Portugal. On January 2, the company announced the acquisition of 100% of Portuguese tower operator OMTEL, valued at EUR 800 million, 25% of which was owned by Altice Europe, SFR's parent company.

The Portuguese company heads 25% of the tower network in Portugal and its main customer is PT Portugal, the operator owned by Altice Europe.

"With OMTEL, we are not only integrating one of the leading independent operators of telecommunications infrastructure in Portugal. We are also committed to consistent growth in Europe, integrating an eighth market - which naturally extends the current geographical coverage of the seven countries in which we are already present", says Tobias Martínez, CEO of Cellnex.

The management of the Spanish company has also indicated that it wants to strengthen OMTEL's network with an additional 350 sites by 2027, for an investment of 140 million euros.

An investment outburst that does not seem to frighten Cellnex. Since its IPO in 2015, the company has announced that it has committed no less than 12 billion euros of investment for the acquisition or construction until 2027 of around 48,000 telecommunications infrastructures in addition to the 10,000 or so that the company had at its disposal at the time. Its portfolio thus amounts to a total of 58,000 sites.

Cellnex's appetite also extends to France. After acquiring no less than 3,000 sites belonging to Bouygues Telecom in 2017 for a total of 800 million euros, the Spanish ogre finalised at the end of last year the acquisition of 70% of Iliad TowerCo, which operates some 5,700 mobile telecommunications sites in France, for a deal valued at 2 billion euros.

2 billion. The transaction with Free, which also included the sale of 100% of Free's Italian infrastructure subsidiary and 90% of Salt's antennas, enabled Cellnex to increase its number of masts from 3,000 mobile telecommunications sites to more than 8,000 sites in France.

This is enough to make the competition shudder, given that Hivory claims a fleet of more than 10,000 sites and TDF's fleet peaks at 13,900 sites.

 Read the article

Source : ZDNet

According to the Financial Times, Orange is preparing to split its mobile tower business, the pylons where 3G/4G equipment for mobile phone use is installed, into a separate entity. This could be a prelude to a partial or total sale later on. A new entity that can be valued between €8 and €10.3 billion. Stéphane Richard's group has the largest number of antennas in France (15,000 in total), and one of the largest in Europe (59,000 antennas on the Old Continent, in Africa and in the Middle East).

Orange will inform about its projects during its investor day scheduled for December 4, according to sources in the Financial Times. Its CEO stated last May that "the current appetite for infrastructure funds clearly reveals the intrinsic value of telecom networks". The French operator must ask itself the question of "maximizing the value" of its infrastructure, he said at the time.

This type of split and sale is a cash movement of telecom operators in search of cash. Last August, Free sold 70% of Iliad Tower Co. In 2018, SFR (Altice) partially sold SFR TowerCo while Bouygues Telecom initiated the movement in 2016 with two disposals for a total amount of 700 million euros.

 Read the article

Source : BFM Business

When SFR was acquired by Numéricable in 2014, the parent company, Altice, made a number of commitments to the French Competition Authority in order to better promote this concentration in the telecoms sector. These commitments, which were entered into for a period of five years, should no longer be maintained, the gendarme said at the end of this period, on 28 October. With one exception: the agreement to co-develop the fibre in very dense areas concluded with Bouygues before the acquisition.

The French Competition Authority has therefore released Altice from several of its commitments concerning:

• the obligation to open the cable network to other operators, and not to use the information available to Altice to deploy its fibre network.
• the prohibition on offering cable offers in La Poste branches with which SFR had a distribution agreement.
• the maintenance of dark fibre (FON) or dedicated optical local loop (BLOD) offers "at least as advantageous as before the operation".

On the other hand, the competition police officer was more picky about the Faber contract concluded between SFR and Bouygues Telecom in 2010. A co-delivery agreement for the horizontal fibre optic network in 22 cities located in very dense areas (including Paris). Especially since Altice was called to order in 2017 because of "particularly serious breaches" of the execution of this contract. 40 million fine and injunctions to comply with deployment commitments co-financed by Bouygues Telecom.

The Authority decided to lift part of the injunctions: those, without penalty, requiring Altice to connect the buildings concerned by the agreement as from the 2017 decision. The competition police officer considers that Altice's interests are now "aligned with those of Bouygues Telecom" within the scope of the Faber contract. The parent company now favours FttH.

On the other hand, the injunctions under penalty payments for the stock of buildings that were to be fibrated before 2017 are maintained. The Authority is examining the progress of Patrick Drahi's group to determine whether it should also be released from these commitments. Its conclusions will be issued "in the first half of 2020".

 Read the article

Source : DegroupNews

Kosc was unsuccessful against Altice and contested the decision taken by the Competition Authority. Indeed, seized on the occasion of the sale of Completel's copper network, the competition police last week issued its verdict: "there is nothing to define that Altice has committed a fault with regard to its obligations".

This is a major blow for the wholesale provider of telecom services to operators in the enterprise market, which has been denouncing SFR's parent company's late deliveries for months. This decision is all the more difficult to accept as its financial equation has become significantly more complicated.

But the operator does not intend to stop there since he "rejects", in a press release, the verdict of the Competition Authority and announces that he will bring the case before the Conseil d'État. A referral "motivated by the numerous irregularities that have marked the follow-up of the case by the Competition Authority, including the unexplained duration of its investigation in a context of urgency and the probable violation of its secrecy".

In addition, the company believes that the abandonment of Banque des Territoires (Caisse des Dépôts group), one of its main supporters, can only be explained by an understanding of the result favourable to Altice - SFR upstream.

Kosc warns against a prospect of consolidation that it now considers itself the "privileged target of a hostile acquisition" in view of its financial fragility. An operation that would "de facto close the business telecommunications market to the detriment not only of the ecosystem of hundreds of digital business service operators but also of the beginning of catching up on the digitalisation backlog of French SMEs and VSEs", warns the operator.

 Read the article

Source : DegroupNews

See you at the Family Kitchen in Grenoble on May 15th! Isère Fibre, a subsidiary of Altice-SFR, and Rezopole invite you to the 1st Aperezo of the year on Isère soil.

On the agenda: presentation of the project for the digital development of the territory followed by a cocktail reception with Italian scents.