GCharlie
Thanks for clarifying. If there are more frequent "pings" then a/c location should be more precisely fixed than being publicly stated.
Also, as lakedude pointed out earlier, I think many are misinterpreting the arcs shown on a map as a flight path (like flying a DME arc). These are plots of possible positions of the a/c at a given point in time. The aircraft can be at one and only one point along the arc. The arc defines the possible points at a given time that a "ping" was received.