Earlier this week I was able to pick up some new equipment (aka toys) from the customs at Berlin TXL airport. Among other things I learned that despite filing an Internet-Zoll-Anmeldung (IZA) (Internet Customs Declaration), online via the German customs web site, you still have to print two copies of it on actual paper. I only had one copy, and the customs department does not have a copier to produce another copy. Buerocrats :/
In any case, I am now the proud owner of an Anritsu MD8470A signalling generator, which is basically a small 3G (WCDMA) network on steroids, all inside a single box. It can do mobility management, call control, voice calls, sms, packet data service, WAP, etc. It even has a legacy GSM/GPRS radio, so you can do inter-RAT hand-over between 3G and GSM.
But what is even more exciting: It includes (proprietary) APIs that allow you to send sequences hand-crafted messages on RRC and any layer above. This means it is an excellent tool for security and robustness testing of mobile phones.