Yes they did! It was assumed that the data would be decoded only by land stations, and therefore only over and LOS from land. I engaged in a discussion with someone who said it would be useless in Northern Canada since there would be too many ground stations needed!
OK I see what you mean, I'm not sure who you were discussing it with but the concept of ADS-B via satellite has been around and progressing for a few years, anyone who said it wasn't possible was missinformed. This 4 year old pdf might be of interest.
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org...cember2013.pdf
I think Malaysian and their service providers are claiming this is groundbraking because they are saying they are the first airline to tap in to it to have full time, real time data, with, it seems possibly an alerting function at head office, rather than ADS-B to satellite being a radical new concept...