Orange and Bouygues Telecom on Tuesday distanced themselves from reports that they are holding merger talks.
"Orange cannot comment on press rumours that have been artificially driving the market for the past two years. In France, Orange is the telecoms operator that has the least need for consolidation," said the French incumbent, in a statement sent to Total Telecom.
In a separate statement, Bouygues Telecom said "it has no plans to withdraw from the telecoms and television sectors and reaffirms its long-term presence in these two industries."
The comments were made after Bloomberg late on Monday cited sources who claimed that Orange and Bouygues were holding preliminary merger talks.
While the responses from the two operators do not directly address the report, they suggest that neither company plans to engage in consolidation any time soon.
Indeed, Bouygues’ board in June unanimously rejected an unsolicited bid to acquire Bouygues Telecom from Altice, the ambitious owner of Numericable-SFR. That offer was reportedly worth around €10 billion.
And while there has been talk of consolidation in the French mobile market on and off throughout 2015, Orange has not featured for the most part, given its considerable market share.
According to the latest figures provided by the mobile operators themselves, Orange serves almost 40% of France’s mobile users, excluding customers using MVNO services. Ora nge and Bouygues Telecom together would account for 59% of mobile network operator customers.
That degree of concentration of market share would be unlikely to get past the EU’s competition regulators.
The European Commission appears to favour facilities-based competition at present, as evidenced by the oft-cited failure of TeliaSonera and Telenor’s plans to merge their Danish mobile operations earlier this year.
Brussels is also carrying out an in-depth investigation into 3UK parent CK Hutchison’s proposed acquisition of local rival O2, rejecting a request by the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to examine the deal.
