Cellphone Connect

It has been rumored for some time that Fariq Hamid's (MH370 FO) cellphone connected to a tower near Penang. A page from the Malaysian Police investigation recently appeared in the public domain (se JW blog) stating that the connection indeed took place to a Celcom basestation located at Banda Baru Air Itam. It was further stated that this basestation has a range of 32km.

Graphic below shows the location of this basestation along with other points of interest. The black circle in the graphic has a radius of 32km.

Edit 16Nov16

The time of the registration (~17:52) coupled with the time and distance to the last radar contact (18:22 and  250 nm respectively) suggest that the average speed of the aircraft over that distance was -500 knots). That in turn would imply the registration occurred when the aircraft was above 20,000 feet.