Unprecedented internet growth of past three years may be at an end

Home and office workers in Britain are spending as much as eight hours a week on the internet, according to an official survey.

But the unprecedented growth of the Web over the past three years could be nearing an end.

According to the latest quarterly survey from telecoms watchdog Oftel, the number of homes connected to the internet has remained flat for the first time since records began in January 1999.

On average, users spend around eight hours a week online, although this figure is inflated by a handful of very heavy users.

The majority of households spend around five hours a week on the Web.

The latest report, based on a Mori poll, shows 39 per cent of homes are connected to the Web, a slight fall on the last quarter when four out of 10 homes said they had the internet.

The news will come as a blow to online media owners, which have taken solace from the fact that, despite the general downturn, the number of internet users has continued to grow.

The slowing growth of the internet mirrors the digital TV sector, where growth has stalled at around half the population - with the rest showing little or no interest in the medium. Similarly, while half of the adult population use the internet, around a quarter of them do not access it at home.

The report suggests this is because people do all their surfing on other people's time and money - at work, or in libraries and internet cafΘs.

Internet usage remains most prominent among the higher social grades and higher income groups, although the report notes that, over the past year, there has been a rise in internet connections among C2DE households and those on lower incomes.

This is mainly due to the number of consumers who now subscribe to flat-rate service providers, enabling them to spend as much time online as they like in return for a monthly payment. The number of households paying in this way is now equal to the number with old-style accounts, which charged users per minute spent on line.

Houses in the south-east and south-west are the most connected in the country, while only one in four households in Wales are hooked up to the internet.

The nation's favourite internet service provider is Freeserve, the choice of almost one in five British internet users, followed by AOL, BT and NTL.

The report also highlights the abject failure so far of broadband to make an impact on consumers in Britain, with only 1 per cent of consumers claiming to have a fast ADSL connection.