I have been using my Verizon Wireless V740 Express Card for a while to access the Internet from pretty much everywhere. It's a great productivity tool that allows the frequent traveler to do pretty much anything that he needs on the road as if he was in the office. The most common place you would have to connect to the Internet to catchup on some work is the airport. With the amount of hours that you typically spend waiting for your flight or delayed flight there's a lot of time that can be used to do online work instead of waiting to get home, the hotel or your office.
Most of the airports charge to use their Wi-Fi network but it's great to see that the network of free Wi-Fi access is expanding, even I have my own card, using the local free Wi-Fi will typically be faster. Today I'm flying back from Denver to Raleigh and I used their free Wi-Fi network for a couple of hours before boarding my flight. So how does this work? The free connectivity is simply sponsored by a commercial company, so before you actually access the Internet you watch a 30 second ad:
After this you have complete access to anything including connecting your VPN. The only thing to be aware of is that they add a top frame with a banner to your browser when you browse sites. This kind of free Wi-Fi access is getting very common not just in airports but also in restaurants, hotels and other business. The Wi-Fi Free Spot Directory is a great web site that will let you keep up with all the places that offer free Wi-Fi access. Another great directory is iLoveFreeWiFi which is also using Google Maps to show you the spots on a map.
Some companies are even trying to offer citywide free Wi-Fi. Google tried that in San Francisco and failed and now Meraki is picking up the pieces and trying to offer this service there. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if this service expands to other cities.
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