Telecom Tycoon Patrick Drahi Seeks to Offload Struggling SFR Amid Subscriber Losses and Debt

Declining results, increasing plans, poorly rated customer service. Nothing is going well for SFR in France. Since 2023, the telecom operator has lost about 2 million subscribers and is drowning under a huge debt estimated at 24 billion euros in February 2025, according to Le Figaro. In short, the Altice group subsidiary has become a burden for its owner Patrick Drahi who is looking to get rid of it.

In France, four major operators namely Orange, Free, Bouygues Telecom and SFR, absorb 96% of the mobile market share. The market share of the operator with the small red logo is not negligible and its acquisition by one of the existing competitors would put the latter in a monopoly situation. The French media reports that Bouygues Telecom, which signed an agreement in 2014 to share its mobile networks with those of SFR, is expected to buy the Altice subsidiary.

But not alone. The group should enter into negotiations with Orange and Free for an equal share purchase of SFR. If so, the three operators will have to share SFR’s seven million subscribers. Besides this offer, Altice does not rule out the possibility of SFR being bought by a foreign group. Middle Eastern giants like STC, already present in Europe, could show interest in the sale of SFR.

According to the same source, Altice would prefer to sell SFR to a single foreign group rather than to three operators already present in France. In the meantime, the operator is trying to get out of the financial crisis and improve its customer feedback on Trustpilot or Google in order to become the preferred operator of the French, with the best value for money in the market. To reduce its debt and reassure customers and shareholders, SFR plans to sell its subsidiary XpFibre, dedicated to fiber network infrastructure in France.