French mobile giant Bouygues Telecom has signed an exclusivity agreement with Credit Mutuel-backed Euro-Information, with a view to acquiring all the capital of its MVNO subsidiary Euro-Information Telecom (EI Telecom). The acquisition has been priced at EUR530 million (USD594 million), to be paid on the closing of the deal, with an additional fee of between EUR140 and EUR325 million, which is contingent on the achievement of certain business performance criteria and payable over several years. Bouygues expects the deal to be completed by the end of 2020, subject to obtaining the necessary administrative authorisations, particularly from the French Competition Authority, and following consultation by employee representative bodies. TeleGeography notes that EI Telecom operates a number of MVNO brands, including Credit Mutuel Mobile, CIC Mobile, NRJ Mobile, Auchan Telecom and Cdiscount Mobile. The various brands served two million mobile subscribers as of December 2019.
Grupo MASMOVIL has renegotiated certain aspects of its network agreements with Telefonica Espana (Movistar), relating to both fixed and mobile access. As part of the deal, MASMOVIL will migrate Lycamobile Spain mobile lines from Telefonica onto its own mobile network that, with a view to achieving 85% of its planned network synergies by 2021. As previously reported by MVNO Monday, MASMOVIL completed the acquisition of Lycamobile Spain on 12 June, following the receipt of approval from the relevant antitrust authorities. The deal was valued at EUR361 million and included roughly 1.5 million subscribers.
Sticking with Spain, Simyo, the sub-brand backed by Orange Espana, has announced that it has reached the 1.2 million subscriber mark. In a press release dated 22 June the operator added that it witnessed record levels of data consumption during Spain’s recent ‘state of emergency’ (lockdown), with 14,000TB of data used in March, April and May this year. Simyo was acquired by Orange Espana – from Dutch telco KPN – back in December 2012. The unit initially launched over the Orange network in January 2008. Simyo reached the one million-milestone back in September 2018.
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