However, as anyone who earns money working from home as an entrepreneur will tell you, sooner or later you need to get out of the “office” no matter how great your setup is. I love my little basement home office, but there are no other people there but me, and sometimes I look up and realize that I haven’t seen the sun from a different angle in days. This is especially true in the fall and winter when the days get shorter and my workday can go from before the sun comes up to after the sun goes down. That means working from Starbucks or another coffee place.

For many people accessing the Internet from an insecure wireless hotspot like the ones they have at Starbucks, bookstores, and coffee shops is no big deal. Most banks and financial institutions use encryption on anything important, and certainly when logging on with a username and password. Even online email accounts like Google Gmail or Microsoft Hotmail use SSL when you are logging in. But, when you are talking about a full work day and accessing client-provided information, networks, data banks, or archives you can’t always be sure that the encryption is already there. And, when you are a freelance writer working on a deadline, you can’t always remember to check before you type away at the keyboard, potentially exposing sensitive data or giving away usernames or passwords in the clear.

Recent news about attorneys mass subpoena names and address from IP addresses also makes me nervous. I don’t do a lot of P2P type stuff, and almost none of it would attract a copyright attorney’s attention, but if they can do it for that, they can do it for anything. More to the point, current U.S. case law seems to suggest that a law firm can subpoena user data from ISPs and Internet providers based upon suspicion that something may or may not have been done by the IP address in question and, by extension, whoever was using it. I’m not interested in getting caught up in any “widely cast nets.”

Paid VPN Service Versus Free VPN Service

There are some free VPN services out there. The most popular one is HotShield. It offers free encrypted VPN connections, but it comes at the cost of having advertising. Ads are not a big deal when they are kept out of the user experience on a full-size monitor, but try working on your 10-inch ultra-portable netbook with an ad banner across the top. In some cases, it can take up a quarter of the screen.

Most free VPN services are also slower thanks both to the need to keep costs for a free service offering down, and in order to entice some users to upgrade to their faster paid VPN service.

Add it all up and it makes using free VPN a hassle for serious networking and Internet connectivity. I find myself weighing the burden of firing up the VPN client versus the odds that I can keep myself safe without it. That’s not a good way to run a railroad, so to speak.

Premium VPN Services

I did some preliminary research and it appears that getting unlimited secure VPN access with encrypted network connections to the Internet and beyond is realatively innexpensive.

I’ll be looking into various VPN providers over the next couple of weeks and trying several of them out. There are reviews out there, but it so hard to distinguish fake reviews from real reviews that I don’t know which ones to trust. The only reviews to speak of from respected publications review VPN services as they pertain to the computing or IT industry and not how they work for the entrepreneur trying to keep his small business safe while working remotely from the road or the local coffee shop. Hopefully, I can help fill this gap by reviewing VPN connection providers from the viewpoint of a small business owner networking on the go.

Grab the Best Hubris RSS feed so you don’t miss any of the upcoming VPN provider reviews here on BestHubris.com. While you are at it, you can check out my recent review of WiFi Guardian hotspot security software.

If you offer a premium VPN service and want me to include your product in my review, please contact me and I will test out your product. Please let me know whether I will need to download and install software or not, and let me know how to access the reviewer’s account username and password.

Network Security VPN Internet Services is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC

At issue is the AT&T coverage map shown in Verizon’s ads. The commercials parody the Apple iPhone commercial’s line, "There’s an app for that" with the line, "There’s a map for that." The map in question shows AT&T wireless coverage for its 3G network, the one that is supposed to be handling the iPhone and it’s users because it is a faster data network. With 3G connections, accessing the Internet on an iPhone or any other mobile phone for that matter is much faster than on the old cell phone network technologies.

AT&T sued saying the ads were misleading and then started airing its own ads starring Luke Wilson in which Wilson says that AT&T has way more coverage than shown on that Verizon map. Then, he goes about flinging post cards around the map.

So, what happened? Who is lying, Verizon or AT&T?

The answer, as it often is in marketing, is that no one is technically lying. How can that be possible?

Well, as it turns out the map Verizon shows of AT&T 3G coverage is accurate. In fact, it is lifted from AT&T’s own maps of its 3G coverage area. So, what is AT&T complaining about?

AT&T said in its lawsuit that the ads implied that AT&T cell phone network has no coverage of any kind in the non-red areas on the map. It claims that casual T.V. viewers would be confused by the map and think that AT&T’s dismal 3G coverage was the same as its marginally better coverage with older slower technologies.

The Luke Wilson counter-commercials in which Wilson says, "Verizon has been making an issue about maps," uses a map of AT&T coverage that includes any kind of coverage whatsoever.

So, who is telling the truth?

Well, if you want to use a smartphone, iPhone, or any other mobile phone that accesses the Internet using the latest fast networking technology, then Verizon is telling the truth. You will only get that faster 3G coverage on the map with less red.

If you just want to make a phone call, then AT&T is telling the truth with the map that has a lot more red.

The question is, which is more deceptive? An ad portraying a network better suited to handling the kind of traffic used by "an app for that" showing how bad AT&T’s fast 3G network coverage is, or an ad depicting that ad as inaccurate by showing a map that displays where old network technology should allow any cell phone to at least make a call?

I’m going to give this one to Verizon as being more truthful. They are essentially saying that iPhones aren’t going to work very well in a lot of places because 3G coverage is not available in many locations. While AT&T is trying to show counter that they "cover" a much bigger area without mentioning what kind of coverage they are talking about.

As always, with marketing it comes down to parsing the exact wording in the advertisement.

AT&T Coverage Versus Verizon Wireless Coverage – What a Difference Wording Makes is a post from Best Hubris. All content exclusively written by Freelance Writing Business of ArcticLlama, LLC