Wireless Westfield

Westfield Corp. Inc. (Los Angeles), the U.S. division of Westfield Group (Sydney, Australia) — global owner and operator of shopping centers — has announced the expansion of a strategic marketing relationship it has with Intel Corp. (Santa Clara, Calif.) to place wireless facilities in most of its 66 U.S. shopping centers.

Earlier this year, Westfield developed an agreement with Wireless Facilities Inc. (San Diego) to begin enabling Wi-Fi connectivity at its shopping centers. To date, 30 Westfield locations have been wirelessly enabled, which translates to wireless hotspots spanning over 30 million aggregate square feet. Last month, Intel debuted Intel Experience Zones at 24 Westfield Shoppingtowns, which spotlight products from Intel partners including Gateway, Microsoft and Sony. The digital home kiosks showcase how entertainment, digital media and computing systems are merging into singular platforms.

“Westfield’s locations offer an excellent environment for reaching technically savvy consumers who are interested to learn more about how they can improve their lives with new products and services,” said Michael Hoefflinger, director, co-marketing, Intel’s corporate marketing group. “Having our Intel Experience Zones in their Wi-Fi enabled centers allows us to interact with new consumers in a fun way.”

Westfield’s Wi-Fi initiatives provide benefits to consumers using laptops and other wireless devices, enable smaller retailers to use new wireless credit card and internet systems, and allow larger retailers to find line-bursting opportunities, transmit messages via satellite and develop future inventory controls and management applications.

The Intel Experience Zones are featured in selected Westfield locations in California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Washington.