It's only a little off. Services like Spot [http://findmespot.com/en/] offer satellite tracking with updates every 5 minutes while moving for $100 for equipment and $100/year for service. Spot doesn't quite cover the whole world, but Delorme InReach does [http://www.inreachdelorme.com/] for like $250 for equipment and $150 per year.

Given how easily available this technology is to anyone with a credit card, it's hard to understand how a $250M airliner doesn't have something similar.