France Télécom, which is struggling under about €60bn ($60m) of debt, has sold its transmission tower business Télédiffusion de France (TDF), to a private equity consortium for a total of €1.9bn.

The buyers are Charterhouse Development Capital, the UK buy-out house; CDC Ixis Equity Capital, the leveraged buy-out arm of CDC Ixis; and Caisse des Dépôts, the French bank. The private equity firms have been in talks with France Télécom since the beginning of the year.