on the topic of mobile phones and why no apparent contact to/from any of them:
If you set up an open femtocell in the aircraft, would that not capture all the mobiles on board, which would all see it as their nearest and most powerful "cell tower". Any call from such a mobile would go nowhere other than the femtocell. And since mobiles wind their RF down to the minimum required, with a strong local cell tower signal they would all be on minimum RF power.
(For the record, I am not an aviation professional, nor am I a mobile phone specialist)