This is nothing new, you could do this before w/ any old CDMA/GSM phone w/ a Qualcomm chipset and getting QPST/QXDM what's cool is using non-qualcomm tools for it! :)

You'd be surprised by putting your phone in listening mode and changing around a few numbers can get you. the SMS paging channel is really cool, and you can turn your phone into a sort of Stringray from Harris Corporation.

More so, alot of this stuff is from the Phreaking Scene, which is, not dead, but very much different then its Mitnick heyday w/ the Oki900 and late 00's with ESN/MEID fun.

Most of the phreaking scene nowadays involves "rom" hacking vs the actual modem of the phone, or unlocking, or probing into the cell phones firmware to grab the 16 byte key that'd unlock the modem for you to play with and do everything from modify the bluetooth serial address, increase tx power, or more.