Vodafone and Finetwork face a tangled legal battle

Vodafone and Finetwork began as partners. Finetwork signed a distribution and commercial cooperation agreement that allowed the young operator to grow through Vodafone’s network. The relationship later became a sprawling legal fight involving the brand, unpaid debts and competing claims.

The dispute has produced an unusual outcome: two different companies now market services under the Finetwork name. The founders own Finetwork.com, while Vodafone Spain owns Finetwork.es. Vodafone paid €15 million for the Finetwork brand.

The story began in 2019, when Pascual García, a former Apple employee, returned to his home city of Elda in Alicante and launched a mobile virtual network operator. The company did not have its own network and relied on Vodafone’s infrastructure. It pursued an aggressive advertising and sponsorship strategy aimed at young customers, with the brand appearing at concerts, on Fernando Alonso’s clothing and on a popular television program.

The spending helped Finetwork rise to fifth place in Spain’s market by customer numbers. At its peak, it came close to 1 million users, and its executives presented the company as a strong candidate to acquire rights linked to the Orange and MásMóvil merger. But the expected opportunity did not materialize, and the strategy behind Wewi Mobile, the company operating the brand, began to unravel.

Much of Finetwork’s growth had depended on unpaid supplier bills, with Vodafone among the main creditors. In January 2024, Vodafone Spain sued Wewi Mobile for breach of contract. The companies negotiated an agreement under which Wewi committed to pay €19.8 million of a total €63.1 million debt, adding another layer to the legal battle.