Orange, France’s leading telecoms operator, said late on Friday that it agreed to sell part of its fixed fibre assets in the country to a consortium of three investors for about 1.3 billion euros ($1.58 billion).

It is the first time that the Paris-based company, which is also carving out its mobile towers in most European countries to shore up the group’s value, has announced a sale of part of its prized broadband network in France.

The move comes as the telecoms industry must invest to keep on deploying upgraded broadband networks in Europe as well as a costly new mobile Internet technology, or 5G.

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