The lack of protection that consumers feel in the face of the business of mobile phone operators is driving the growth of the Somos Conexión cooperative, born in El Prat de Llobregat with the purpose of offering an accessible and transparent service.
The non-profit project was born in 2015 with the contribution of 150 members and after several years of consolidation today has 9,000 members and 4,000 sponsored. The service has expanded throughout Spain, although 65% of users are concentrated in Catalonia.
“It is quite a challenge to work for sovereignty and accessibility in a market dominated by large companies”, comments Mercè Botella, founder of Somos Conexión. Despite its objective, the cooperative collaborates with Orange, Vodafone and MásMóvil to offer telephony and fiber optic services to its customers.
“We do not have our own infrastructure, but we use agreements with these three companies. We cover between 95% and 97% of the entire country”, details Bernat Alcolea, coordinator and person in charge of economic management.
The cooperative defends that as its own entity it has more power to negotiate prices than an individual. And, in addition, you can guarantee your customers a price freeze, eliminate the period of permanence and provide an accessible customer service. “We reject contact through computer robots and we are committed to a service provided by people,” commented the managers of the cooperative, which employs around thirty people in El Prat de Llobregat.
With this bet, in which Somos Conexión acts as an intermediary between the large telecommunications companies and individuals, the cooperative billed 3.3 million euros in 2022. Then, it closed a total of 20,944 contracts, a figure that this year the entity expects increase until reaching a turnover of 3.7 million euros. Regarding profitability, Alcolea ensures that the cooperative generates a net profit margin of between 2% and 3% of income. As it is not for profit, it ensures that all the profit is reinvested in the project, the payment of the suppliers and the improvement of the service.
With 30 people on staff, the cooperative also collaborates with the installation of fiber optics in municipalities where the connection is weak. This is the case of the Xaneta project, in the municipality of Valls, of the Xarxa Greta network, in the municipality of Flix, and the collaboration with the Guifi.net project, in La Garrotxa.
