Malaysia Airlines plane

I've been following coverage of this disappearance of this airliner and it is a real tragedy, but I can't help thinking that in the 21st century, with in flight WiFi becoming more commonplace, I think it's ridiculous that commercial airliners don't send real time position and status/condition updates to their airline's central servers. It would aid with diagnosing problems in flight and would help pinpoint an actual search location should the airliner have to ditch in the ocean(as I'm assuming this one did). With RADAR the minute the airliner falls below a certain altitude it is no longer viewable on RADAR.