Aerospace giant Boeing hopes to build its embryonic high-speed airborne Internet service into a $4.5 billion venture by the end of the decade, the unit's president has said.
Connexion President Mr Scott Carson, speaking to journalists on yesterday, estimated the annual potential market for airborne Internet service at $45 billion.
"We are targeting about 10 per cent of that for ourselves," he said.
That blue-sky estimate assumes that by 2010 about 1.5 billion passengers a year will tote laptop computers onto commercial jets, each of which will offer Internet connections, and which Boeing would rent to Web surfers at $10 an hour.
Boeing will clearly not have the market to itself. A more nimble rival with a less ambitious service, Seattle-based Tenzing Communications, has already struck deals with Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic Airways Ltd.
But the high costs of delivering Internet service in mid-flight has already driven some potential rivals out of the market and the ultimate list of service providers may be quite short, Mr Carson said.
Airlines have not balked at Boeing's undisclosed Connexion fee, nor at the proposed share of Connexion revenues Boeing would deliver to its partners, which is also confidential.
Carson also declined to say how much Boeing was spending to develop Connexion, but noted that the plan calls for enough revenues to pay off that investment in about five years.