Boeing Plans Internet Access for Air Travelers.

Boeing Co. plans a new initiative to sell satellite-based services such as Internet and mobile-phone access to people on board planes. The world_s biggest aircraft maker is looking for partners to help it build the infrastructure of the high-capacity satellite system, said Ken Medlin, the vice president and general manager of Boeing_s information and communications system unit. The effort could mark Boeing_s biggest move yet into the satellite-services market, which it views as potentially lucrative yet also fraught with risks. Iridium LLC, which runs the first global satellite hand-held phone network, has sold far fewer of its phones than expected and doesn_t have the money yet to pay $800 million it owes banks on the project. Boeing will target airline passengers, business-jet owners, crews of military aircraft and others who fly regularly -- a market that Medlin estimated could eventually reach billions of dollars a year. Communicating aboard aircraft is now difficult and expensive, Medlin said. Boeing hopes to reduce the costs and make accessing the Internet aboard planes as easy as it is now in offices. Instead of paying $5 or $10 for newspapers at an airport store, he said, customers might pay to access the Internet if they could do it quickly. The project comes at a time Boeing already is investing in other large satellite projects -- notably Teledesic LLC, the so-called ``Internet in the Sky' backed partly by Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, and Ellipso, a satellite-based mobile phone system. Boeing has said it views the space business as one that could offer high growth to offset lower margins in its commercial-airplane business, which faces constant pressure on prices and production costs. The industry predicts communications via satellite will triple by the early part of next century, reaching $160 billion a year in sales.