Iliad said that it had put an end to its plan to acquire T-Mobile US, after Deutsche Telekom and “selected board members” of the US arm “refused to entertain its new offer”.

Having made a rejected bid at the end of July 2014 which Iliad said offered a “significant premium”, the potential acquirer put together a consortium with two private equity funds and tier-one banks to enable it to improve its offer.

This included “enhancing the cash amount and increasing the share of T-Mobile US’ capital to be acquired from 56.6 per cent to 67 per cent”. This offer was worth “about $36 per share (cash and share of value creation)”, the French company said.

Iliad again iterated that it was looking at more than $2 billion of cost saving annually through the deal – a figure some observers had questioned.

It had been suggested that DT would be willing to listen to offers which valued T-Mobile US at $35 per share or more, although it seems that the Iliad bid did not have enough in its favour as it stands.

With T-Mobile US seeing something of a renaissance, it has been reported that DT may be prepared to sit-tight, until after the latest spectrum auctions.

Deutsche Telekom has not commented.