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With today's technology, why are voice recordings not transmitted, saved somewhere in case a disaster does happen?

Let's say a plane goes missing, they can spend a long time trying to salvage the black box, thus could take years to find out the real cause of the problem. Surely if the data was transmitted, stored somewhere, the investigators could then use this information to clearly determine the cause and highlight any technical failure to help prevent such things happening again.

Simon
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Phorce
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    We've had a similar discussion after MH370. Those answers cover this question, too, so I vote to close this. – Peter Kämpf May 21 '16 at 08:13
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    The simple answer is: Because 1/ there is no free datalink available over the largest part of the world, which happens to be oceans, deserts and mountains, 2/ there is a large volume of bits. The lesson has been learned from AF447 and MH370, and new solutions with satellites will soon retransmit ADS-B broadcast to the ground. However ADS-B broadcasts only few information (far from the content of the recorders), but sufficient for search and rescue operations (including a GPS fix). – mins May 21 '16 at 13:45

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