AOL surfers clock up a billion

AOL’s UK customers spent more than one billion hours surfing the internet last year, the ISP has revealed. That equates to two billion episodes of Coronation Street, approximately four hundred million train journeys from London to Leeds, or more than 100,000 years. As well as surfing, 100 million members are on the AOL Instant Messenger service, sending 2.5 billion messages every day. Karen Thomson, chief executive of AOL UK, said: “This is a significant milestone and proof that the internet is playing an increasingly important role in UK life. It’s becoming less about the technology and more about how it can enhance people’s daily lives – whether it be saving time, making communication easier, or being entertained.” According to AOL, it has more than 2.3 million AOL members in the UK - including more than 600,000 on AOL Broadband. Other figures from the ISP reveal that it automatically protects email from more than 90,000 viruses and blocks around 1.2 billion junk emails globally each day.