There are now more than 11 million people using the Internet at home in the UK, according to NetValue.

Home Internet users in the UK now number 11,599,000, an increase of more than 3,000,000 users from December 1999. The number of women online has increased by 1,288,000, to 4,656,000 users, making up 40 percent of the home Internet audience. Users age 50 or older have grown by more than 680,000 users to 2,235,000, with kids online (14 and under) now accounting for just under 600,000 users. Internet activity has increased for all users in the UK over the last year, NetValue found. On average, users went online for 4.2 more sessions a month in December compared with the same time in 1999. Older surfers connected to the Internet for an average of 12.5 days, 1.6 days longer than in December '99. December also saw traditional retailers enjoy huge success on the Web. Visitors to argos.co.uk reached 694,790, or 6 percent of the home Internet population. Of the most visited general retail sites in December, six out of 10 were high street retailers. Argos was the most visited general retailing Web site, followed closely by comet.co.uk with 5.4 percent reach and tesco.com with 4.8 percent reach. Next.co.uk had more than 150,000 users, or 1.3 percent of all UK home Internet users. Strong sales for mobile phones pre-Christmas was underlined by the growth in the number of visitors to telecoms Web sites. More than one-third of UK home Internet users, or 3,980,000 visitors, went to a telecom site in December, up by almost 1 million from November. Bt.co.uk was the most visited site, with boltblue.com (a mobile services site) in second position. Nokia.com attracted 4 percent of users, 2.8 percent visited orange.co.uk, 2.7 percent visited vodafone.co.uk, and 1.7 percent visited carphonewarehouse.com. According to NetValue, 7,187,000 Internet users, or 62% of the online population, own a mobile phone.