French operator SFR plans to make 5,000 of its 14,300 staff redundant between 2017 and 2019, Reuters said, citing union sources.

Billionaire Patrick Drahi, who controls SFR’s parent Altice, promised no redundancies until mid-2017 when he acquired the operator two years ago.

SFR would not comment on the report.

Drahi built up Altice through debt-backed acquisitions followed by cost cutting to free up cash. However, cutting so deep at SFR would face fierce opposition, not just from unions but also the French government, which has previously shown itself sceptical about job cuts in the tech sector.

Earlier this year, Drahi said that SFR was overstaffed. And SFR CEO Michel Combes told the French parliament that the group will adjust its workforce to reflect market conditions.

The French market is fundamentally coming to terms with a price war that has raged since the entry of Free Mobile in 2012. And a number of attempts at consolidation have failed.

The cost of falling margins has already been redundancies at SFR’s rivals, including Bouygues Telecom which cut its workforce by about 2,000 jobs to 6,500 since 2013 through two voluntary departures rounds, equivalent to about 25 per cent of its total.