Anybody using a BTS for debugging?

[Gianni Tedesco]

Hi,

It seems like a BTS is required in order to really debug anything one
develops with osmocombb. I'm still looking at implementing SMS. However
the only off-the-shelf option seems to be USRP which is about $1,000
right? Is this going to become a very expensive hobby or are there
cheaper options here?

Is there a way to bypass L1CTL on the phone and feed the data in to,
say, openBTS? If not, it would seem useful to hack such a thing up...

Gianni