Not long ago I was stunned all the time seemingly ease that Amp'd raising round after round. Now it turns out even the gigantic cash infusions are already spent:

Los Angeles-based Amp'd, which has so far taken $360 million from a number of high-profile investors, said late Friday it was seeking bankruptcy protection in order to restructure its business.

The company, which has 200,000 subscribers in the U.S., Canada, and Japan, is the latest U.S. mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) to deliver grim financial news to its investors.

"So Amp'd went back to its investors for more money and when they were turned down, the option they took was to file bankruptcy," he said.

Mr. Besen believes that the Amp'd name was not strong enough to inexpensively acquire subscribers, particularly when Amp'd was using entertainment content as its market differentiator.

"They are using big box retail outlets like Best Buy to sell a complicated service that needs to be explained to the customer," he said. "Selling voice is one thing but selling data they needed their own trained retail channel and sales force to educate the customer and they did not have that."

Amp'd blamed its "rapid growth" and the fact that its "back-end infrastructure was unable to keep up with customer demand" for its problems.

Amp'd Mobile's very long list of creditors includes Verizon Wireless with $33 million, Motorola at $16 million, and Vivendi with $10 million

Among its long list of equity investors are Highland Capital Partners, RedPoint Ventures, Columbia Capital, Rho Ventures, Universal Music Investments, and MTV Networks.

I just got my first handset from Virgin Mobile - a super-flat handset with no monthly subscription for US $29. I really liked theiwe website and sign-up process cool and simple. But apparently markets are more saturated as thought. After all who could escape the marketing power of T-Mobile, Cingular ans Verizon?