As Stephanie Hooks settled in to her bus seat Friday, accompanied by her young son and a stroller full of groceries, she stared at her smartphone.

The Olde Town East resident was grateful for the Wi-Fi on COTA's Cbus Downtown Connector.

"It's convenient. It saves on my data plan," Hooks said as her thumb flipped through pages displayed on her phone.

"I ride the bus every day. I can turn my data off" to use the free-to-customers COTA Wi-Fi.

Eight months after it was supposed to happen, COTA is installing Wi-Fi on its fleet of buses.

"We're all for any opportunity that gives our customers flexibility. It's an opportunity to increase our ridership," Micheal Carroll, COTA's vice president and chief information officer, said of the Wi-Fi that will be provided free to riders.

As a pilot program, COTA has provided free Wi-Fi since April for customers on its Cbus Downtown Circulator, which provides no-charge rides between the Brewery District and Short North through Downtown, and on its AirConnect service between Downtown and the John Glenn Columbus International Airport.

Now, it plans to provide Wi-Fi free to riders on its 350 fixed-route buses by the end of August. Its smaller buses used for the handicapped and other on-demand riders are expected to have free Wi-Fi by next year.

They will be done in batches — "a couple of buses at a time coming online," COTA spokeswoman Lisa Myers said — because the buses usually are in service providing rides. When its fleet has Wi-Fi, Carroll said, COTA will become the third bus service in the country to do that.

"We are a leading-edge transit organization," Carroll said. "That's part of being a Smart City."

Last year, Columbus beat out 77 other cities to earn a $40 million U.S. Department of Transportation grant to develop intelligent transportation systems that likely will result in driverless vehicles, roads, stoplights and other devices communicating with one another digitally to improve traffic flow.

T-Mobile is the COTA Wi-Fi supplier. COTA's Wi-Fi asks users to log in, but that's not necessary to use the service.

Free Wi-Fi was supposed to happen in January, but COTA mistakenly believed it could get a major carrier to provide it free for its riders. Instead, COTA is paying $125,000 for the next 12 months for the service. It hopes to attract a sponsor this year and in the future.

"We are using this," Carroll said, "to make transit more attractive."

kperry@dispatch.com

@kimballperry