@Foray Access
The "pings" under discussion were empty network keepalive messages sent as a matter of routine functioning of the SATCOM transceiver itself. Imagine this conversation:
"Hello? Anyone there? If, hypothetically, I wished to send some data, could you pass it along for me? Oh, I'm not paid up on this account? So sorry to trouble you. I'll ask again later. Perhaps then I can speak to someone whose bills I've paid."
Pings do not contain signon data, so the carrier can not possibly determine whether the account is current. Pings are used by professionals to determine if a server is connected. However, it is really sloppy software to generate superfluous pings. If there is not data to transmit, then there is no reason to waste battery power and bandwith to see which server could take your call if you had a payload to send, like a sign on request. Pings can be generated by cell phone users who do not disable their mobile network, either through settings or through airplane mode. I highly doubt that avionic software is written to ping ad nauseum. It certainly would help if authorities could specify exactly which component is pinking. But due to the absence of information, it's safe to assume they don't know. It took them days to associate the pinging and radar track with MH370. So, can be deducted that engineers have found a way to extrapolate a connection between the pinging and the aircraft.
By the way, the 45,000ft data and then the 0 altitude data seem to support a disintegration of flight MH370. MH370 with its load could not climb to 45000, but a MH370 with missing parts may, in part of the breakdown series.