About the 'pings'
Those of you postulating about whether the 'ping' paging addresses from the aircraft's SATCOM system reporting would contain GPS, flight level, speed, heading, etc.....it clearly didn't because it didn't pass over ANY data string. Get it into your heads, as confirmed officially, the airline was not signed up for this aircraft to pass SATCOM data of this type to Boeing.
Why do you posters keep going over the same ground asking about data transfer from the aircraft?!
What the plane WAS doing is, nevertheless, continuing to page the (non-contracted into) satellite monitoring system with its 'pings'.
Now, if there were two satellites or, better, three which had logged only those pings against accurate time, that would - when all the mountain of data is analysed - provide a position. The continuing repeat 'pings', with known time frequency, would enable the monitoring organisation to extrapolate the heading and speed, and maybe the altitude, for as long as the 'pings' lasted.