By Maaike Noordhuis - Dec 22, 2011 3:19 PM GMT+0700
Royal KPN NV (KPN) agreed to sell its KPN France mobile unit to Bouygues Telecom (EN) as competition in the country’s wireless industry grows.
The unit, which runs as a so-called virtual network operator under the Simyo brand serving 180,000 French prepaid customers, will probably be disposed of this quarter, KPN said in a statement today. The Hague-based company didn’t provide financial details.
A fourth mobile operator, Iliad SA, is scheduled to begin service in France next year. Iliad, founded by billionaire Xavier Niel, has pledged to drive down prices in the country, where France Telecom SA (FTE)’s Orange, Vivendi SA’s SFR unit and Bouygues Telecom dominate the industry. The French market is “difficult,” Thorsten Dirks, who run KPN’s international mobile-phone operations, said on Nov. 30.
KPN will remain active in France through its Ortel Mobile brand, which also operates in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland, the company said today.
KPN rose as much as 0.7 percent to 9.04 euros and was up 0.6 percent at 9:17 a.m. in Amsterdam. That pared the stock’s decline this year to 17 percent, valuing the phone company at about 13.3 billion euros ($17.5 billion).
To contact the reporter on this story: Maaike Noordhuis in Amsterdam at mnoordhuis@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net
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