In one year, four major companies have been redeemed, reducing the competitive power of these alternative groups.
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Virtual mobile operators are less and less real. These telecom groups, who rent the network of Orange, Bouygues or SFR to sell, then, mobile telephony services, saw their market share collapse in 2021. According to the figures unveiled, in early February, by The electronic communications regulatory authority, posts and distribution of the press, Virtual Mobile Network Operators (Mobile Virtual Network Operator, MVNO) only held 7.9% of the French mobile market at the End of 2021, against 11.7% a year earlier. In issue, a wave of unpublished acquisitions. In one year, four large MVNOs were redeemed. One way to focus the French market at the bottom, while a rapprochement between the four major players (Orange, SFR, Free and Bouygues Telecom) remains hardly conceivable.
Bouygues Telecom, which unveiled, Thursday, February 24, its 2021 results, with a turnover up 5%, at constant scope, and an operational profit of 663 million, was, with SFR, the One of the two major predators of MVNO. The subsidiary of the Bouygues group did not hesitate to pay 530 million euros, beginning 2021, to seize Euro-Information Telecom (EIT), an MVNO held by Crédit Mutuel, which markets mobile telephony packages Under the Auchan brands, NRJ, Cdiscount, Crédit Mutuel and CIC.
The invoice could even be increased from 140 million to 325 million euros, payable over several years, depending on the achievement or not by EIT of economic performance indicators. SFR followed his competitor’s footsteps: Patrick Drahi’s operator bought, in 2021, the Ex-Leclerc Mobile), Coriolis and Prixtel.
“A good way to Calm competition on tariffs “
“The acquisition of an MVNO allows the operator to win a customer base and a distribution network. In a fixed and mature costs, where market shares are difficult to win, this brings a Interesting scale effect, “says Sylvain Chevallier, Associate of the BearingPoint Board Cabinet, in charge of the telecommunications sector.
The purchase of EIT has allowed Bouygues Telecom to seize the 2 million subscribers claimed by the MVNO of Crédit Mutuel, but also to strengthen its distribution network, with the possibility of marketing its offers in the 4,200 banking group agencies. With Setro, Coriolis and Prixtel, SFR has set up nearly 1.5 million customers in its pocket, almost 10% of its general subscriber park.
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