Nope, he used a phantom cell, a stingray and not talked about stingray relays is more of a plug and play product, that you can actually see these camouflaged on cell towers. You can tell by the cables once you climb up.
You can also use a hackrf or plain sdr (software defined radio) with gqrx.

I make builds of these for researchers like you and sell them if you are interested :).