The bus company (DPT) is trialling the use of free wireless internet on two of its buses which run to Mosgiel.
If the trial is successful, and early indications are that it will be, free wireless will be introduced soon for passengers.
Mr Baas came up with the idea after wondering how people like himself monitored things such as online auctions, if they closed at 5.15pm, just as the bus came.
"What do people do? Do they catch the bus or wait and go an hour later so they can see what happens?
"Passengers travelling with us can spend up to 45 minutes on a bus. In that period of time, people will have the ability to jump on the 'net to surf or do email. They don't have to wait until they get home."
After some research, which showed expensive options were being implemented overseas, Mr Baas contacted Gen-i business development manager Kyle Forde to see what could be done locally.
Gen-i, a retail division of Telecom, had been excellent, Mr Baas said.
Through the XT network, Gen-i had provided mobile data sticks for the trial.
Coverage on the route was good except for two places - on the motorway beside Green Island and entering Mosgiel.
However, by the time Mr Baas had refreshed his screen, coverage had been fully restored.
The download speeds on the bus were faster with the XT mobile service than Mr Baas had on his office PC.
DPT had a plan with a set amount of gigabytes and would monitor internet use to see how it was received by passengers.
"We hope to have enough users for the gigs we have there."
Another local company would monitor the DPT site remotely to check what sites people were using and that they were not downloading questionable content, Mr Baas said.
Some sites, like YouTube, had been blocked because of the amount of bandwidth they used.
But Facebook was still available.
Two buses new to the fleet were being used for the trial.
If the service proved popular enough, Mr Bass planned to introduce touch-screen devices in the buses for passenger use.
