Scentre and Optus have partnered to rollout state of the art wi-fi service in 21 Westfield shopping centres across Australia.

The rollout will commence this month, improving customer experience with a free, fast, easy to use wi-fi service for all shoppers.

The service provides shoppers with up to 1GB of free data for a three hour period each day and will be accessible across entire common mall areas.

The national rollout follows two successful pilots in October 2014 at the newly redeveloped Westfield Miranda, NSW and Westfield Garden City, QLD.

The free service attracted around 3000 sessions on average per day at each centre, and lengthened the average dwell time with shoppers who used the service staying 12 per cent longer than those who did not.

Peter Allen, CEO at Scentre said the new service is an example of investing to improve the customer experience through innovation

“Working with such a reputable technology provider as Optus will provide benefits for our shoppers and our business. With over 500 million visits to Westfield shopping centres in 2014, we believe that this service will meet the growing shopper demands for data as they increasingly use their smartphones to inform their shopping trip and connect socially. This service will strengthen the appeal of our assets with our local communities,” he said.

Optus Business is providing the wi-fi solution, in partnership with Aruba and SkyFii, to implement the rollout and manage the service for Scentre Group.

The service will also provide advanced location analytics and will enable the provision of personalised content for subscribers.