Falcone’s LightSquared Raises $265 Million for Buildout

July 05, 2011, 9:14 AM EDT By Greg Bensinger

(Adds estimate for network’s cost in second paragraph.)

July 5 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Philip Falcone’s LightSquared Inc. wireless venture said it raised $265 million of additional funding from new and existing investors for building out its network and other corporate expenses.

LightSquared has now raised a total of $2.3 billion in the past year, according to a statement from the venture today. The company may need to raise as much as $4 billion to construct its so-called fourth-generation network, Jonathan Chaplin, a Credit Suisse Group AG analyst in New York, said in May.

The venture, based in Reston, Virginia, plans to compete with AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless by selling wholesale 4G wireless service. It has pledged to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to build a network to cover 260 million people by 2016.

LightSquared, backed by Falcone’s Harbinger Capital Partners hedge fund, is working to resolve concerns its network may interfere with global-positioning systems. It has signed a deal with Sprint Nextel Corp. to share network equipment and building costs, including cell sites.

--Editors: Ville Heiskanen, Peter Elstrom

To contact the reporter on this story: Greg Bensinger in New York at gbensinger1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peter Elstrom at pelstrom@bloomberg.net

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