Patrick Drahi is making progress with his plans to break up Altice’s French mobile unit SFR, as Altice seeks to reduce its debt.

French website BFM TV reported last week that Altice founder Drahi has stepped up plans to break up SFR and sell the unit to domestic rivals liad (Free), Bouygues Telecom, and Orange.

Drahi aims to raise €23 billion ($26.99bn) from the sale of the carrier, of which €15bn ($17.6bn) is debt.

BFM TV reports that Drahi would gain €4bn ($4.69bn) of this as he owns 55 percent of SFR, following a restructuring earlier this year, which slashed the company’s debt by €8.6bn ($10bn).

A sale of SFR would reduce the French mobile market from four mobile operators down to three, further driving consolidation talk in Europe’s key mobile markets.

The reports last week follow earlier speculation in May that Drahi was considering a sale of a controlling stake in French telco SFR.

SFR has around 26 million mobile customers across France.

But the telco’s parent company, Altice, is looking to ease its overall debt, which currently sits at €15.5bn ($18bn).

The breakup of SFR is poised to benefit Bouygues the most, given the company already has a RAN infrastructure sharing deal in place with Altice.

As Orange owns 32 percent market share, it’s least likely to gain from the break-up of SFR’s mobile infrastructure assets, for competition reasons, while Iliad-owned Free, with 25 percent market share, will also be limited.

BFM TV notes that SFR’s six million broadband Internet customers will be of strong interest to each of their domestic rivals.

Other Altice sales

Altice has sold a number of key assets in the last couple of years, including its 24.5 percent stake in UK telecoms giant BT to Bharti Airtel, in a deal estimated to be worth about $4bn at the time. Drahi only increased Altice UK’s stake in BT to 24.5 percent in May 2023, and even had plans to increase it to nearly 30 percent.

However, after years of acquisitions, the company has been looking to shift assets in order to pay down its mounting debt.

The company is open to selling its telecoms business and recently spun off its French data center assets, forming a new company with more than 250 facilities in France, which were then sold to Morgan Stanley.

Altice has been in talks over a deal to sell its Portuguese mobile unit, and has separately looked to sell off its data center unit in the country.