It's a pretty good troll, but the chances of it being true are very low. I think someone attended the excellent talk: "Femtocells: a Poisonous Needle in the Operator's Hay Stack" [1] about 3G MITM and got inspired to have a bit of a laugh.

This is so far into the "state sponsored only" realm that if you'd actually pulled it off and were bragging about it you'd provide some kind of proof instead of generic symptoms designed to make people paranoid.

I'm pretty surprised at all the media outlets that are carrying this and people taking it at face value. Anyone can write up something and send it to a mailing list - remember that full disclosure is pretty much ground zero for security trolling.

[1] http://www.slideshare.net/zahidtg/femtocells-a-poisonous-nee...