Orange is close to selling its Dominican Republic unit to Altice, a Luxembourg-based cable and telecoms private equity firm, in a deal that could raise in excess of €1 billion for the French telecoms group.

According to a Bloomberg source, an agreement could be announced as soon as this week.

Orange Dominicana is the second-largest mobile operator in the Republic behind America Movil’s Claro.

Orange has 3.3 million subscribers versus Claro’s 4.6 million, according to Q3 2013 figures compiled by GSMA Intelligence.

Sales at Orange’s Dominican unit topped €450 million in 2012.

Speaking at an investor conference in Barcelona last week, Stephane Richard (pictured), Orange CEO, said the sale of the Dominican Republic business would be at a price “significantly over” €1 billion.

Orange, which put its Dominican Republic business up for sale earlier this year, claims to have attracted multiple bids for the asset.

Other groups said to have expressed interest include Digicel, owned by Denis O’Brien, the Irish billionaire, and Cable & Wireless Communications, the UK-listed telecoms group.

Altice owns and operates various cable, mobile, internet and data-centre companies across Europe and the Indian Ocean region

It’s also the biggest shareholder in France’s largest cable operator Numericable, which held an IPO this month.