French operator Free is maintaining its target of eventually capturing a 15 to 25 percent share of the mobile market, said parent company Iliad's CFO, Thomas Reynaud at a Les Echos conference in Paris. He did not say specifically when Free Mobile expected to start turning a profit nor what market share would be necessary for it to happen, only that it would try to do better than others, such as TeliaSonera's Spanish unit Yoigo, which took five years to break even. The operator's biggest challenge is rolling out its network nationwide to reduce its dependence on a roaming deal with Orange France that will cost it an estimated EUR 1 billion over three years. It plans to invest the same amount in its roll-out, with plans to install 2,500 antennas by the end of the year, versus 1,000 in March. Free Mobile's licence requires it to cover 90 percent of the population by 2018. Reynaud said that the mobile operator had done "very well" in second quarter recruitments, despite other operators saying they have returned to customer growth. Based on Free Mobile's first half, Iliad aims to double its turnover to EUR 4 billion in 2015.
