Aerospace giant Boeing hopes to build its embryonic high-speed airborne Internet service into a US$4.5 billion venture by the end of the decade.
Unit President Scott Carson, speaking to journalists, estimated the annual potential market for airborne Internet service at US$45 billion.
"We are targeting about 10 percent of that for ourselves," he said.
That blue-sky estimate assumes that by 2010 about 1.5 billion passengers a year will take laptop computers onto commercial jets, each of which will offer Internet connections, and which Boeing would rent to Web surfers at US$10 an hour.
