CTIA’s 2008 conference kicked off this week here in San Francisco with over 15,000 in attendance.  The annual mobile technology bonanza highlights some of the industry’s latest innovations and is sure to focus on the swiftly growing relationship between handheld devices and wireless broadband access.

We’ve been interested in the growth of wi-fi enable handhelds for some time.  In the course of building Free the Net, our own large scale free wireless network in San Francisco, we came across some compelling metrics.  Since its birth about a year ago, nearly 150,000 wireless devices have used the network.  The percentage of those devices made up by iPhones has grown from 6% to 20% in just the past five months.

We’re trying out some ways to integrate these new users into our solutions, creating a customized iPhone splash page for Free the Net.  Below are some images of the iPhone splash pages we are testing.  As with all of the solutions we try out – expect to see the ability to customize the welcome page of your Meraki Network to mobile users in the coming months!

– Posted by Lois Schonberger