Many providers now offer free internet access with no start-up and no or low telephone costs. Of the 17.9 million people that have internet access, 8.2 million actively use the net. This compares with 7.6 million active home users in March, out of a total 16.9 million. While these figures may seem surprisingly high, they are at the conservative end of estimates. Other net measurement agencies suggest as many as nine million homes could have internet access.
Men are still more likely to log on to the net than women.
In the US, however, men and women log on in equal numbers. Microsoft comes top Microsoft and Yahoo dominate the top five internet domains accessed by UK surfers, the survey found. Yahoo had 2.4 million users. These figures are boosted by people who use MSN as their internet service provider and have not changed their default home page from the MSN portal site. The top British-run website was the BBC, which came in at number nine.