Internet rapidly becoming part of daily routine

More than a quarter of British adults now use the Internet on a regular basis, with almost half this number logging on every day, new research has found.

Sponsored by ecommerce company Commercenet, the study surveyed a random sample of 4700 adults on their Internet usage, including time and money spent online.

Around 27 per cent of the country's 46 million adults said they had used the Internet in the last month, with 44 per cent of this group doing so on a daily basis.

The study found that 72 per cent of online adults use the Internet for work, 69 per cent use it to research travel destinations, and 60 per cent to check sports and entertainment news.

While only 27 per cent of Internet users had actually bought goods online, 49 per cent had used it to compare the price of goods and services.

Neil Ellul, Commercenet managing director, said the organisation had been surprised by the uptake figures.

"It's a lot higher than I expected - people have been very cynical about Internet figures," Ellul said.

In recent times there had been a surge in the number of women using the Web, a development that mirrored the US experience of the past year, Ellul added.

While the study confirmed anecdotal evidence that the Internet is fast becoming part of the average person's life, it also revealed that 1.6 million people, or 3.4 per cent of the population, had still not heard of the medium.

The study is likely to be repeated biannually, in order to build a profile of Britons' evolving Internet usage.