John McCubbin has responded:
You raised a couple of interesting issues in your post.

I noted your comments on remote areas. The impact on remote areas is certainly an issue as today. However, I have just spent some time with the NGO sector and the rate of change in these regions is staggering. On Internet access the greatest growth regions between 2000-2012 were Africa (3,606%), the Middle East (2,639%) and Latin America (1,310%). Penetration rates are skill low but these are dramatic changes. It is a similar story on mobile phone access with Africa and the Middle East growing by 104% last year. By the end of this year 65% of the population in Africa will have a mobile phone account. The NGOs are only just waking up to the impact of this and the military should also be thinking hard about what it means for special or expeditionary force ops.

The more worrying aspect is your second point on state interference and manipulation. Certainly in Iraq and today in Syria there is clear evidence of state intercept and psyops. I also suspect the number of times I have seen the IDF and Al Qassam Bde blogs going off-line over the past couple of days has been due to individual or state sponsored cyber dabbling. Identifying reliable in-country sources and getting them an encrypted satphone should be a key consideration, although even that has its risks.