[The_Victor]

Family members have already said that cell phones are working but go unanswered. Isn't it possible that just one of those phones have the GPS enabled?

[no-to-illegals]

Yes

[edcoil]

I heard the problem in that area is that advanced technology like gps on phones just don’t work. They use more WWII IRF technology and the recent sun-spots we got hit with may have caused them a problem.

[Blueflag]

Folks — *IF* passengers’ cell phones and smart phones were/are still operating, then the GSM/CDMA NETWORK by itself can locate them to a CPE no larger than 1KM. That presumes of course they are in range of a compatible tower or three.

The GPS capability is not magic technology. It’s not needed to find a device, it just reduces the search radius.

The most discrete location services are good to a radius of about 9 metres on average. That’s LIS-hybrid.

But the device has to be enabled, has to be on, and has to be in range of a compatible cellular network and maybe a Wi-Fi AP or two.

The ‘ring’ these people hear when they call their relatives’ devices is not actually the ‘phone’ ringing, it is a network generated tone to tell the caller that the network is working to terminate that call on the called device.

In the US, generally if you call a device that is off, you’ll go straight to voice mail. Internationally, the network ring will start even as the ‘cloud’ tries to locate the device on various roaming networks.

Don’t buy into this crap.

[arthurus]

I fully believe that the fate and location of 360 are known and have been known. There are surely political problems and problems of political correctness that must be addressed before the AC can be "found," I think. It will NOT be attributed to Jihad unless one of the parties, such as China, announces that and then there will be a lot of minimizing and calling it a one off crazy man's act. Or, it did land somewhere and no one is saying anything about that until a rescue operation is mounted.
If it, indeed, continued to fly then surely satellites picked that up and the flight path is known.

[cuban leaf]

Isn’t it possible that just one of those phones have the GPS enabled?

---

If the phone is receiving a signal, a tower is logging where it is. The tower is, at the very least, logging that it is the one being pinged by the phone. If three towers are getting any ping at all, the phone company knows where the phone is within a few feet.

[cynwoody]

Family members have already said that cell phones are working but go unanswered. Isn't it possible that just one of those phones have the GPS enabled?

Obviously, they're wrong.

If family members were right, however, GPS would be irrelevant, since the phones would have to be close to the tower with which they registered. And this mystery would be long over, assuming the telco knows where its towers are.