Business news for Mon, 24 Dec 2007 & with words service+services. 4 news.

Airlines and upstarts seeking to deliver high-speed Internet services to passengers say they've learned from Boeing's decision to pull the plug on a similar service.

THE number of Chinese broadband users has hit 122 million, the highest in the world, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday, citing an official from the information industry authority. Sixty percent of the netizens surfed on the Internet via broadband, said Jiang Yaoping, vice minister of the ministry of information industry, at a work conference of China Telecommunications Corporation on Saturday. Last year, more than 30 percent of China Telecom's income came from non-phone services, rising from 5.5 percent in 2002, the report said. One-third of the new broadband users are farmers, where the demand for the service is high, China Telecom officials said. The increased user number boosted the non-voice income of fixed-phone carriers, accelerating the transformation of traditional phone carriers into comprehensive information service providers, the report said.

Airlines, providers learned lessons from Boeing's experience Airlines and service providers seeking to deliver high-speed Internet services to passengers say they have learned from Boeing Co.'s 2006 decision to pull the plug on its ambitions to outfit its planes with a similar service.

Shareholders in NetB2B2 have been unhappy over the handling of the internet business-to-business services group's fundraising plans, but failed to hijack the extraordinary general meeting last week.