Hunt for missing jet widens to distant waters

[Berlin Expat]

8. It may depend on the

carrier. As an example, if I call a friend of mine here who has a prepaid service, it just rings over and over again. She's never set up her voicemail. So when her phone is off, it just rings and rings. Most of those who've described this noted that when they called, it would ring a number of times, and this disconnect, meaning the recipient couldn't be found. Bear in mind that the carrier sends a tone to the transmitting phone until the receiving phone connects; either they pick up or it goes to VM. This tone does not correspond to “ringing” at the other end, although people have long been conditioned to believe that it does.

As far as others saying that their relatives phones were showing up as active, this will explain it:

Some of the relatives have said passenger QQ accounts (a Chinese web chat service like Gmail Chat) are still online. Tencent, the company that administers QQ, says if a user has not logged out of QQ, but merely turned their phone or computer off, they could still seem to be there, even if they are not.