Connexion by Boeing has set its pricing for broadband, in-flight Internet access: Pricing was estimated to run about $30 to $35 for the longest flights. Today's news shows that Connexion is willing to be quite granular and offer a larger variety of plans to appeal to a greater range of in-flight user.

The pricing is quite sensible. They offer both flat-rate and metered charges. For flights of six hours or more, $29.95; three to six hours, $19.95; less than three hours, $14.95. Metered pricing is 30 minutes for $9.95 plus 25 cents a minute thereafter.

Given the nature of the service, these rates seem well tuned to the audience and the cost structure. This announcement doesn't note it, but previous interviews with airlines and Connexion stated that the initial services will be 5 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream; up to 20 Mbps downstream is available if usage warrants, however.

Lufthansa will be the first to have a plane in the air with commercial Connexion service. Others, including SAS and ANA, will follow this year.

Connexion's only serious competitor, Tenzing, remains shrouded in doubt with only a few airlines offering their low-speed walled-garden/client-based offering. In June 2003, Tenzing said United Airlines would adopt their offering as JetConnect via Verizon AirFone as a partner. At the time, I predicted failure for the service, because it was priced at $15.98 per flight for extremely low-speed service that required a special Web-based client for remote email access via an in-plane proxy mail server.

Worse, you paid extra fees per message exceeding 2,048 bytes. And virtual private networking connections were impossible: no speed and no direct Internet access.

It's clear that Connexion is going right after the heart of Tenzing's United commitment--which we've heard nothing about through United's bankruptcy process--by offering sub-three hour flights for $14.95 and three to six hour flights for $19.95. These durations represent virtually all domestic U.S. flights.