Although Bouygues looks out of the running for Vivendi’s SFR, Claudio Aspesi, a senior analyst at Bernstein Research, reckons France’s third-largest mobile operator will probably be involved in future market consolidation.

“It seems likely that one way or another Iliad and Bouygues will end up in each other’s arms and that France will settle into a market of three broadly integrated players,” he said in a research note.

Aspesi said a merger between Bouygues and Iliad, France’s fourth-placed mobile operator, would be reviewed by the French regulator rather than Brussels and could come “relatively quickly”.

“This [the merger] would have few remedies and lead to very rapid wireless pricing repair as it would eliminate competition amongst the two price discounters,”  added the analyst.

According to Aspesi, Orange – France’s largest mobile operator – would benefit from a Bouygues/Iliad tie-up.

Without such a deal, and assuming that Vivendi sells its SFR unit to Altice – which owns 40 per cent of Numericable, France’s biggest cable operator – Aspesi said that Orange would face continued wireless competition and the gradual loss of its unbundling revenue from SFR (the largest unbundler) to Numericable (roughly €550 million of revenues).

A Reuters report said a combination of Bouygues and Iliad “makes sense on paper”. Iliad needs to enlargen its mobile network, while Iliad is much bigger in the fixed broadband market. Iliad claims second spot here while Bouygues runs the smallest fixed broadband operation in France.

Given that Bouygues has a market capitalisation of around €5 billion compared with Iliad’s €10 billion, the report speculates that Iliad could try to swallow its bigger mobile rival.

Bouygues and Iliad have already had partnership discussions of sorts. In an attempt to smooth the regulatory path for its attempted takeover of SFR, Bouygues agreed to sell its mobile network and much of its spectrum to Iliad for €1.8 billion.

Those plans now look in tatters, however, after Vivendi chose Altice for exclusive talks about the sale of SFR (which runs the second-largest mobile operation in France).

Patrick Drahi, billionaire founder of Numericable, was quoted by Reuters on Monday as saying that synergies with SFR – should the merger go ahead – could be worth as much as €1 billion per year.