

Yeah those things have been around a while. Web scrapers and sneaker bot operators are fond of them. Sometimes they run racks full of real phones so they can put downloaded phone apps on them for nefarious purposes, instead of having to try to fool the apps with virtualization.
The thing about shutting down the cell network sounds like alarmism unless there was something unusual that they weren’t saying.
Call recipient can tell when incoming number terminates at a data center (most VOIP). They like cellular network numbers for the same reason they like residential IP addresses.