Less than a month after its launch, at least 30,000 people are using Ocean's free Internet access service, the company claimed yesterday. Ocean said it now had more than 20 per cent of the Internet access market and had increased its capacity to cope with the demand.

"We are extremely pleased with the level of take-up of our new service, which has exceeded our expectations," said Mr Derek Kickham, Ocean's business development manager.

Ocean has issued 200,000 disks containing software to browse the Internet and the local call settings to access the free service. Mr Kickham said that in many homes more than one family member would use the service. This would mean that Oceanfree had considerably more than 30,000 new users.