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The seats may be cramped and the food may not stretch beyond a bag of pretzels, but for a monthly subscription of $15 to $25, your work e-mail, as well as Web browsing, will be available.

On Monday, Boeing disclosed one of the partners in its project to provide broadband Internet access on airplanes. The aircraft giant also disclosed that the service will launch significantly later than forecast.

New York-based Screaming Media.com will partner with Boeing to provide Web content aggregation for the high-speed in-flight Internet access service, called Connexion, which had been expected to start by year's end. Scott Carson, president of Boeing's Connexion unit, disclosed that the service won't launch until the middle of next year as Boeing works through complex agreements on revenue sharing and technology deployment with its airline customers.

A rival service from Seattle-based start-up Tenzing Communications has one Singapore Airlines plane flying with Internet access right now, but at slow speeds and with restricted access to the Web.

Connexion is an ambitious project to deliver broadband access in flight to every seat on an airplane. The planned service will use geostationary satellites with regional coverage of the earth. These will transmit data to airplanes fitted with a special antenna originally designed by Boeing for military aircraft. A test plane based at Boeing Field in Seattle is filled with rack-mounted computers; the antenna lies hidden beneath a smooth but noticeable bump on top of the plane.

Boeing plans to make deals with large corporations so that executives will be able to directly access corporate intranets and in particular corporate e-mail while traveling. The service will also enable real-time broadband Internet access and live TV broadcasts.

Designed for Your Destination

Screaming Media aggregates Web content from multiple sources and sends the files to its customers' servers, where it is cached and regularly updated. Software tools allow clients such as AT&T WorldNet to customize the content for their specific audience needs. For Boeing, the company will provide just one piece of the Connexion service: destination-specific content.

News, sports scores, event listings, restaurant reviews, and other localized information will be aggregated so that passengers en route to major cities in the U.S. can have one-stop access to information on that particular stopping point. The content will be delivered to Boeing servers on the ground and from there, updated data will be regularly uploaded to the plane in the air.

Boeing now expects to have some 30 to 35 aircraft fitted with the service by June 2002, with a full deployment over continental North America by the end of 2003.

Carson says Boeing will announce its first airline customers this summer. One source suggests that Continental Airlines may be among those first movers. Passengers flying outside North America will have to wait longer. The Connexion service will be available for some flights over the Atlantic Ocean by the end of 2002 with a full deployment six months later. Pacific Ocean coverage will follow roughly a year later.

The slow rollout of Boeing's service outside the U.S. is providing rivals with an opportunity.

Seattle start-up Tenzing in April launched its airborne Internet service with Singapore Airlines. However, Tenzing's service doesn't offer real-time broadband access; its system uses servers on board the plane to cache a finite set of Web content before takeoff. During a flight, this content is updated using globe-spanning Inmarsat satellites over a relatively slow connection. E-mail sent in-flight is stored on the servers for some time before sending.

For now, a single plane is operational at a ground-to-air connection speed of only 2.4KB. Web browsing is free. Tenzing plans to charge eventually for e-mail transmission. In addition to Singapore Airlines, Virgin Atlantic has announced its intention to deploy Tenzing's system.

Boeing has high hopes for the Connexion service, which is targeted squarely at business users willing to pay for a useful service. "What we promise corporate America," Carson says, "is increased productivity."

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