OK, so you install a unit which is going to broadcast all that info, but what/who is going to receive this data out in the "Dead Zones" around the world?
Rolls Royce figured it out! Their system broadcasts engine data to the sky and they read and monitor it real time for their clients. Granted, their engines aren't on everything in the air...but their system seems to have decent coverage since they seem to be the one legitimate source of data that indicated this flight went on for some time. Too bad that data was focused on just engine info.
I mean, seriously...in today's day and age where you can by 100GB of cloud storage for $1.99/month it's just not THAT much info. Nobody needs to monitor it other than to make sure things are working - it just needs to be available should you want to analyze it.
Insurance companies offer wireless trackers that you can plug into your ODBC port in your car to (supposedly) give you a discount if you are a good driver (that might not be beneficial to some)...obviously that won't work over the ocean but it's just not that hard to collect and maintain data. A ping of data every 5 minutes from a jet relaying speed, heading, altitude, and location isn't that complex.
