France Telecom said Wednesday it would pay 1.5 billion euros to merge its Swiss subsidiary with Switzerland’s No. 2 mobile phone operator, Sunrise, in an effort to challenge the state-run market leader, Swisscom.

France Telecom said it planned to combine Sunrise, which is owned by TDC of Copenhagen, and its own operator, Orange Switzerland, in a new entity with 3.4 million customers and a 38 percent market share. France Telecom will own 75 percent of the new company, while TDC will retain 25 percent, The New York Times’s Kevin J. O’Brien reported.

To read this report in The New York Times in full, see:
dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/france-telecom-sunrise-merge-swiss-mobile-phone-business/