Some semi-off-topic observation, sorry....
Reading again and again about those "inmarsat pings" I feel myself back in 70's and not in the second decade of the XXI century.
Military world (aviation, first of all) has
Link-16 in place for more than 20 years allowing a crowd of various entities (airborne, maritime, ground platforms) to operate collectively in the same information environment, in real time, all over the world.
More recent frameworks like
LVC allow real pilots operating real airplanes train collectively with their colleagues operating sims at the AF bases on the ground. When first such experiments started some 5-6 years ago I once asked a guy about his feelings expecting him saying "well, you know, it's just a trick and fun". But he was serious and the only complaint was about no wingman seen when he was turning his head in the cockpit when in the air.
The stuff from the same very Boeing, by the way.
Moreover,
modern technologies allow a regular dismounted infantry soldier to stay online in real-time, even he/she is in the middle of nowhere. Satellite networks such as
MUOS secure a 64+ Kbps connection, which is enough not to only send telemetry, but interact with team members.
Some "other civil worlds", like e.g. car makers start using IoT (internet of things) techniques to let cars talk to each other and service centers.
With all that mentioned, it looks outrageous that aircraft carrying hundreds of passengers just sends trivial pings every hour, and these ping data are even not easy to find and analyze. Add 1 buck to the ticket price and with 1 Bln passenger per year you can build and deploy, in a few years, a MUOS-like network specially serving civil aviation. And enjoy a hell of data in real-time, in a shared global data space, including not only flight variables but heartbeat rate, blood pressure etc. of every crew member. Of course everything is encrypted and could be decrypted only by those concerned.