my phone dont work at sea., page-7

They were initially reported to be less than 50km offshore. An easy distance to cover over water if they are straight out from a mobile base station.

Anyone claiming to be in distress 50km offshore and continues heading out to sea is either
a) lying because they aren't in distress
b) utterly stupid making a bad situation even worse.

The Aust authorities should have just told "Oh thanks, here's the local emergency number you need to call in Indonesia" and hung up.

DKit