Optus has secured a multi-million dollar deal to rollout high speed WiFi services across 81 shopping centres run by the Vicinity property group across Australia.
The 5-year deal also sees Optus delivering WiFi to six of Vicinity’s key corporate sites around the country.
Vicinity is the joint-owner and manager of Australia’s highest sales turnover centre, Chadstone Shopping Centre in Victoria, and other properties including Emporium Melbourne, Chatswood Chase Sydney, QueensPlaza in Brisbane and Galleria in Perth.
The company manages a further 10 shopping centres on behalf of other investors, but these centres will not deploy WiFi.
{loadposition peter}Optus Business’ managing director, John Paitaridis, says the $20 million connectivity project will result in fast, free and easy-to-use WiFi services for shoppers and visitors to the 81 Vicinity shopping centres.
“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,” Paitaridis says.
“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” and he says the aim is to deliver benefits to both “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.”
Optus Business has previously announced secured shopping centre WiFi contracts with Scentre Group and Mirvac.