A5/3 is a block cipher, 3G connections use a stream cipher. Respectfully, this is not "near-on" identical. http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/334/adv

A5/3 is a block cipher, 3G connections use a stream cipher. Respectfully, this is not "near-on" identical. http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/334/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-stream-versus-block-ciphers http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/334/advantages-a... Integrating support for these algorithms on the device side ends up being a high hurdle. Doing anything at scale is inevitably harder than you expect it to be. If it was a simple change, people would make it.