Optus Business wins $20m Cisco wi-fi deal

Optus Business will roll out free wi-fi to 81 shopping centres in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.

The deal with shopping centre property group Vicinity Centres is worth $20 million for 81 locations, along with six key corporate sites. The company co-owns Chadstone Shopping Centre in Victoria, along with Emporium Melbourne, Chatswood Chase Sydney, QueensPlaza in Brisbane and Galleria in Perth.

A spokesperson told CRN the wi-fi solution will use a mixture of Cisco wireless access points, cabling and switch infrastructure.

Along with providing high-speed wi-fi to customers, retail business owners will also be able to benefit from new connected services such as digital advertising and beacon technology.

Optus Business managing director John Paitaridis called it "one of the biggest wi-fi deployments across Australia", saying mobile devices had become an essential digital companion for retail shoppers.

"Optus provides an end-to-end approach in the design, build and management of wi-fi services to support important clients such as Vicinity deliver a great digital experience to their customers on a national scale…. Our approach is to ensure our customers achieve a great return on their business cases when they invest in Optus wi-fi solutions,” said Paitaridis.

Earlier this year, Optus partnered with the Scentre Group to roll out wi-fi in 21 Westfield chopping centres. Optus has also rolled out wi-fi paired with a data analytics platform in the Broadway shopping centre in Sydney and Orion Springfield Central in Ipswich for Mirvac Property Group.