That money was spent on equipment, primarily a Home Location Register (HLR) bought from Tecore Networks. Every mobile network has one HLR, which tracks every mobile phone so it knows where calls should be routed. When Free Libyana set up in Benghazi the local Libyana engineers provided access to the VLRs (Visitor Location Register) which provide details of nearby handsets. That data was then used to populate the new HLR and get things up and running.

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The next thing is to get over-the-air provisioning to work, so subscribers whose numbers weren't in the captured VLRs can connect to the network without being manually added. Free Libyana also expects to have an SMSC running within the next week, so Libyans will be able to text as well as talking to their friends for free.