Recently, I mentioned that several remote-access service providers had been adding wireless access options to their services mix for enterprise travelers. Note that all three companies, Fiberlink Communications, GoRemote and iPass, have signed deals with Connexion by Boeing, an in-flight Wi-Fi service that connects to the Internet via satellite. Last week, Wi-Fi services aggregator Boingo Wireless announced a similar deal with Connexion.

The service is available on international airlines such as Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airline System (SAS), Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways (ANA).

There are a couple of gotchas with the Connexion Wi-Fi services at this juncture.  First, it will be at least mid-year before users will be able to use their Boingo, Fiberlink, GoRemote or iPass client software with the Connexion service to access their corporate intranets securely. The Boeing system currently supports access via its own Web page only. The network service aggregators are awaiting the Boeing folks to finish up some integration work before the respective authentication mechanisms in their client software can be used in Boeing planes.

Note, too, that the cost of Boeing's Wi-Fi access is a flat fee of $14.95, $19.95 or $29.95, depending on length of flight, according to William Thompson, Connexion's vice president of corporate sales and distribution. (For their part, Boingo and GoRemote have said they will pass along identical charges to their customers.) There are also metered options, whereby you pay a flat initial fee of under $10 for 30 minutes of use, then 25 cents per minute thereafter.

For many users - at least, those traveling coach - this will seem expensive for a few hours of data privileges unless they absolutely need to conduct Internet research or positively must move information to get a contract signed and e-faxed. Most people survive pretty well by uploading/downloading immediately before and after a flight.

However, interesting possibilities do open up for voice. Using an IP softphone client with a Wi-Fi connection on the plane for an Internet phone call could preclude the need for those pricey, per-minute satellite phones. Having VoIP-over-Wi-Fi available (how would the network know the difference?) could make the service pay. But it could also skew available network capacity, in that the on-board wireless LANs currently use bandwidth-constrained 802.11b technology. So quality of service is a question mark.

Joanie Wexler is an independent networking technology writer/editor in Silicon Valley.