Altice France has extended the exclusivity period granted to Bouygues Telecom, the Free–Iliad Group, and Orange for its mobile unit SFR.

It comes after the trio put forward an offer of €20.35 billion ($23.66bn) to snap up SFR last month.

The offer is improved from the previous one put forward to Altice Group in October, when Altice owner Patrick Drahi immediately rejected a €17bn ($19.8bn) offer from the three telcos.

Providing an update this morning (May 15), Altice confirmed that it has extended those exclusivity talks with the telcos after the initial period ended today.

The date has been extended to June 5, 2026.

“At this stage, there is no certainty that these discussions will result in an agreement,” stated Altice.

If the deal is agreed, it would see France’s telecoms market slim down to three mobile carriers from four.

When the consortium’s offer was put forward on April 17, it noted that it would cover the acquisition of the majority of assets operated by Altice France-SFR, excluding shareholdings in ACS/Intelcia, XP Fibre, data center firm Ultraedge, and Altice Technical Services, plus Altice France group’s operations in the French overseas departments and regions.

Explaining how the assets will be split between Bouygues Telecom, the Free–Iliad Group, and Orange, the consortium said the B2B business and customers would be taken over by Bouygues Telecom, while the B2C business and customers would be shared between all three.

Beyond this, the other assets and resources (in particular infrastructure and spectrum) would be shared between Bouygues Telecom, the Free–Iliad Group, and Orange, except for SFR’s mobile network in less densely populated areas, which would be taken over by Bouygues Telecom.

In total, the split of price and value would be around 42 percent for Bouygues Telecom, 31 percent for the Free–Iliad Group, and 27 percent for Orange.

It was reported last year that Drahi wants closer to €30bn ($35bn) for SFR, as the company continues to sell off its assets.

This has included its 24.5 percent stake in UK telecoms giant BT to Bharti Airtel, while last month Altice shortlisted four bidders for a controlling stake in French fiber company XpFibre, in which Altice currently owns a majority stake of 50.01 percent.

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.