Martin Bouygues (pictured) has written to French industry minister Arnaud Montebourg offering to support domestic suppliers should Bouygues Telecom’s €10.5 billion bid to buy larger rival SFR prove successful.

In an effort to win over government support, Bouygues would use French suppliers, although only where “technically relevant”, wrote the group chairman and CEO of Bouygues.

Specifically Bouygues-SFR would deploy Alcatel-Lucent equipment in the fixed network, but not necessarily in the mobile network, where Bouygues Telecom is already signed up with China’s Huawei and Ericsson, the Swedish giant.

Bouygues’s letter to Montebourg was leaked to Le Monde.

In a further appeal to the national interest, Bouygues pledged to ask call centre contractors to use France-based employees to answer Bouygues-SFR enquiries except where this is impractical, such as for overnight calls.

Finally, the letter reaffirms a commitment from earlier this week on investment and redundancies.

Bouygues-SFR would invest €2 billion a year on its fixed and mobile networks, it said. Of this sum, €400 million a year would go on investing in fibre networks, particular fibre to the home (FTTH) deployments.

And the company promises that no job losses would be incurred as part of the deal.

Bouygues Telecom is locked in a battle for control of SFR with rival Altice, the parent of French cable operator Numericable.

Bouygues’s letter reaffirms a future listing of Bouygues-SFR would take place in Paris, and the company would keep its headquarters in France. By comparison, Altice is listed in Amsterdam and has its head office in Luxembourg.

Rival Altice has said its €11 billion offer for SFR still stands and remains valid until this Friday (14 March).