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RE: I don't buy it (radio compromise).
Interesting....I was under the impression that BGAN was used my Military orgs (maybe its just PMC's). BGAN as a service can meet NSA crypto standards, "Michael Butler, Chief Operating Officer of Inmarsat, said: “Inmarsat has a long history of providing the US Government with mobile satellite communications that, when combined with NSA-certified Type 1 encryption devices, can be secured to the highest level. With our BGAN service launch, planned for later in 2005, we will offer these customers unparalleled mobile broadband IP service, and it is essential that this capability can be similarly assured for government users."
I know in oil and gas applications BGAN is used for Out-of-Band type management of control and automation systems. There are some real benefits to mobile IP devices like BGAN modems. If you have a lender that provides Type 1 IP encryption you can be mobile as you want with data and voice (especially if your using a soft phone). I would guess your British friends were using something similar to BGAN shared via 802.11b router and VoIP phones.
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RE: I don't buy it (radio compromise).
so is cellular/GPRS/BGAN prominent? For mobile intra-domain data and even voice this technology is becoming standard in a lot of sectors.
Cellular - We don't use it for operations, but they were certainly in use for getting in touch with local contacts. The insurgency was using mobile phones quite a bit until the more savvy realized they were traceable and exploitable. It's still the cheapest option for them ... so while the higher level players may use a more technical solution, the bit players utilize their mobile phones for operations.
GPRS & BGAN - We don't use anything like this, at least not mainstream. Pretty much anything used in operational communications must meet the NSAs crypto requirements [Type-1 capable]. While these technologies offer better bandwidth and quality than what we've got ... without an encryption module they're not of much use for military operations. I did find an interesting radio system in use by the British that basically did local VoIP on a short range, 802.11b network. It was quite a brilliant little idea and being based on protocols interpreted by computers lends itself to either 1) being easily broken or 2) remaining cutting edge with upgrades and rotating crypto.
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