Orange has entered into exclusive discussions with Armenian ISP Ucom with a view to selling its mobile operations in the country.
The sale of Orange Armenia is in line with the telco’s strategy of providing converged fixed and mobile services.
In a statement on Wednesday the operator admitted that "Orange Armenia does not have the necessary scale to carry out by itself the massive investments required to enable it to offer its customers convergent services."
The telco said it is in talks to sell 100% of Orange Armenia. It did not comment on price.
Orange had 630,000 customers in Armenia at the end of 2014. The country’s population stands at around 3 million.
Ucom, meanwhile, is building out a fibre network in Armenia and is strongly pushing its triple-play service, which includes fixed telephony, broadband Internet and IPTV. Merging that business with Orange’s mobile operation makes sense for both parties.
The deal "would enable the creation of a strong Armenian player capable of offering its customers a broad range of fixed and mobile services," Orange said.
Orange became Armenia’s third mobile operator as recently as 2009, launching services in competition with incumbent ArmenTel and MTS’ VivaCell.
MTS-owned VivaCell leads the market with 2.12 million mobile customers at the end of the first quarter of 2015, while ArmenTel, which is owned by Vimpelcom and operates under the Beeline brand, had 790,000 at the same date.
Beeline also offers a fixe d broadband service and had 153,000 customers at the end of Q1, while VivaCell is heavily promoting a quad-play offering.
