Brighton and Hove is booming as one of the top ten cyber areas of Britain with more than 30 per cent of households and businesses on the internet.

Only the West End of London, Cambridge, Reading, parts of Scotland, Bristol and Chester have a greater percentage online.

Neither East nor West Sussex feature in the top ten.

Ten per cent of users in Brighton are frequent purchasers over the internet, ordering their shopping, stationery and other services, such as theatre and travel tickets.

A further 20 per cent make the occasional internet purchase.

The survey was carried out by the marketing company CACI .

It showed the internet was urban based and that fewer than six per cent of people in villages across Britain were online.

It found 31.1 per cent of businesses and households were online in Brighton and Hove, the same as Southampton.

CACI surveyed 300 internet retailers including Tesco, Yahoo and British Airways.

The company has coined a number of new phrases for Internet users.

There are Virtual Virgins who drive the internet companies crazy by spending a short time on sites and then log off because they are unnecessarily worried about security.

They account for 6.2 per cent of users in the South East.

Chatters and Gamers, 2.3 per cent, spend a lot of time on the net, but never make any purchases.

Dot.com Dabblers, 14.5 per cent, are those who occasionally buy online, but do most of their shopping in the High Street.

Surfing Suits, 6.2 per cent, spend less time on- line, but know what they want.

Young intelligent computer experts are dubbed The Wired Living. They have been on the net for three years, spend hours using it and frequently buy online.

Mike Herd, of the Sussex Innovation Centre based at Falmer, said: "It does not surprise me Brighton and Hove is in the top ten. It is a very wired area. It is part of the buzz of the place. We have a high student population and we encourage students to get online, which increases the percentage."

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