Melbourne Cup racegoers on a winner with free WiFi

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 01 November 2011 11:05

Your IT - Mobility

Tabcorp guests at Flemington Racecourse for today's Melbourne cup will be able to enjoy free WiFi services using a system installed by Perth-based Internet kiosk developer, PieNETWORKS.

PieNETWORKS was chosen by Tabcorp earlier this month to install and operate the WiFi service at parts of the Flemington Race Course for this year's Spring Carnival and Melbourne Cup. pieNETWORKS said it would coordinate a number of suppliers and service organisations to install the network.

"Tabcorp guests will be offered the WiFi service for free and they will also be invited to download Tabcorp's 'apps' for smart phones and iPads," the company said. "These apps will allow users to access form-guides, see video of their chosen horses and to place a bet on any of the races occurring around Australia on Cup day and indeed any other day. The free WiFi network will allow race-goers to become Tabcorp online users at absolutely no cost to them."

If the trial proves to be successful, "We believe there are many other opportunities for pieNETWORKS to assist Tabcorp with WiFi in pubs, clubs and licensed premises," the company said.

PieNETWORKS is in the process of negotiating a contract with Telstra for a large scale rollout of its WiFi enabled Hotspot Webphones, following the successful completion of a trial of 50 of the units at Australia's major airports.

However its ambitions extend beyond the supply of such devices. In a company update issued earlier this month, chairman Justin Milne said: "We have some extremely interesting conversations underway with a number of other very large Australian 'bricks and mortar' companies which are desperate to establish and maintain an online relationship with their existing customers. We believe that WiFi and a combination of screens, kiosks and interactive devices can be an extremely important factor for these companies in maintaining their hard-won customer relationships - relationships which are often under threat from so-called over-the-top Internet players."

He added: "They can use this WiFi connectivity, not just to create a good relationship with their customers but also to allow them to download the company's apps to the customers' iPhones, iPads or laptops. These applications might help the customers to find their way around a store, or to purchase products, or to be notified of special offers or relevant news. All this for free, whilst the customer is in-store but importantly, after the customer leaves the store, the application will endure and becomes a way for the company to continue their online relationship with the customer and to attract them back to the store."

Milne concluded: "PieNETWORKS has a number of key competencies which are relevant to this scenario, including our ability to install and manage networks, to build special purpose customer facing equipment and to manage content and media'¦[The company] started its journey as an Internet kiosk provider but the opportunity ahead is to move much further up the value chain and to provide network management and media services to businesses in Australia and overseas." (PieNETWORKS has in fact been trying to make a success of the Internet kiosk business for over a decade)."