I could not sit through the whole 1.5hr video. Most of it shows nothing happening 
GSM encryption is trivially easy to break in real time, but you may be right about the microwave links.
I bet you this was driven by MH370 and the realisation of the implications for national security.
172driver wrote:
There are only so many ships, exploration teams and other remote area users with the money to need and use satellite comms.
The number of ships on the ocean at any one time is largely underestimated. The 2-3 worldwide leaders in ocean shipping have multi-billion $ businesses, and definitely have the money and need for communications. Each parcel being shipped today is tagged and tracked 24/7 globally, and the only way to do that is via satellite. I believe shipping companies is one of the primary markets for the new Iridium satellites going up now, as well as ADS-B reception to track airliners. The satellites all have Aireon payload for the latter.
Satellite is a bit easier to do on a ship, though. Someone who installs the gear for a living on ships did a talk at our hack space a couple of years ago, and the antennas are typically gyrostabilised dishes in big domes and can swivel 360 degrees with quite a lot of azimuth freedom. Not hard to find a place to put one on a ship, rather harder to put one on a plane!
I think the ~$100k+ wifi solutions for King Airs and above tend to be gyro stabilised also. Those are for geostationary satellites. Probably Inmarsat?
