PARIS, June 14 -- Patrick Drahi's Altice France has agreed to sell SFR, the country's third-largest mobile carrier, to a three-way consortium of Bouygues Telecom, Orange and Iliad's Free for 20.4 billion euros, the equivalent of roughly 23.5 billion United States dollars, in a transaction that formally ends the four-operator structure of the French mobile market and reshapes the wider European telecommunications competitive landscape. The memorandum of understanding, signed on the evening of June 6 and confirmed by all three buyers and by Drahi's Altice France this past week, allocates 42 percent of the SFR assets to Bouygues, 31 percent to Iliad and 27 percent to Orange.

The asset-split mechanics matter more than the headline price for ...