Australia's Optus to roll-out public WiFi across Vicinity Centres

Optus Business and retail property group Vicinity Centres (Vicinity) are set to roll out high speed WiFi services for visitors across Vicinity’s national shopping centre portfolio, in addition to six key corporate sites.

Vicinity is the joint-owner and manager of Australia’s highest sales turnover centre, Chadstone Shopping Centre in Victoria. Vicinity’s portfolio also includes Emporium Melbourne, Chatswood Chase Sydney, QueensPlaza in Brisbane and Galleria in Perth.

The $20 million connectivity project will result in fast, free and easy-to-use WiFi services for shoppers and visitors to 81 Vicinity shopping centres across the country.

Optus Business’ John Paitaridis said delivering digital enablement and improving customer experience are the critical drivers for deploying high speed public WiFi services.

“Optus is delighted to be partnering with Vicinity to deliver one of the biggest WiFi deployments across Australia. With the pervasive use of mobile phones across all age groups and demographics, the mobile device has become the essential digital companion for retail shoppers.”

The high speed WiFi services that Optus is implementing for Vicinity Centres will enrich the consumer experience, including enabling personalised content and tailored location information. The WiFi service will also provide significant benefit to retail tenants as they increasingly adopt the use of digital advertising, wireless terminals and beacon technology.

Angus McNaughton, Vicinity Centres’ CEO and Managing Director, said: “We are pleased to be partnering with Optus on our connectivity project, the first step in realising Vicinity’s digital vision of creating a seamlessly integrated physical and digital retail property platform aimed at enhancing the consumer experience, through delivering a better connection with our customers and retailers, and improving operational performance.”

According to Paitaridis, Optus Business has significant experience delivering WiFi connectivity to shopping centres, stadiums, airports and transport hubs. The aim is to deliver benefits to both their enterprise and government clients investing in the WiFi as well as the end customers who will enjoy the value, connectivity and convenience.

“Optus provides an end to end approach in the design, build and management of WiFi services to support important clients such as Vicinity deliver a great digital experience to their customers on a national scale. Enterprise and public sector organisations are viewing Optus as the clear leader in Managed WiFi. Our approach is to ensure our customers achieve a great return on their business cases when they invest in Optus WiFi solutions,” Paitaridis said.