Online share dealing in the UK remains a minority sport. But with popularity growing fast, it has a mainstream future. Of the million or so active private investors in the UK, up to 200,000 trade online today. (An exact number is impossible to establish because many investors have multiple accounts with several different brokers.) The number could double again by the end of the year.

Thereafter expansion could slow a little - an estimated 500,000 of current share traders are thought unlikely to migrate to the internet.

Brokers will then have the challenge of persuading the country's 11m inactive shareholders (and many millions more who have never owned a share) to start dealing online.

Pricing

The pattern of growth in the market will dictate the pattern of pricing. Though there are nearly twice as many internet brokers as a year ago, there are perhaps three times as many customers. That has held back price competition and leaves UK investors paying considerably more for their online dealing than their contemporaries abroad. In countries with a similar culture of private investment in equities, commissions are up to twice as cheap. In Sweden, the cheapest broker charges a flatrate 12 (£7.20). In the US, rock bottom is about $8 (£5.20). But in the UK, deals still cost a minimum of about £10.

Most brokers now acknowledge that the average online commission is likely to stabilise at £10. Some suggest a benchmark of £7.50. A figure of £5 is even possible. However, most brokers are keenly holding on to higher commissions for as long as they can.

The price war predicted when iDealing entered the market in the spring with its no-frills £10 deals has come to little. Most subsequent market entrants have launched with commissions of between £12.50 and £14.95, stressing quality and quantity of back-up research and help services.

What does seem to be on the way out is tiered commission - almost every new entrant this year has launched with flat rates. Also becoming a pattern is the reduction or elimination of the traditional annual management charge.

Brokers which offer both internet-based dealing and a telephone or in-person service are likely to widen the differential between the commissions charged online and offline.

Automated telephone services

Push-button and voice recognition telephone dealing services look like catching on, too. Sharepeople is the latest to develop one, following earlier initiatives by Barclays Stockbrokers,Schwab and Stocktrade. Brokers will be aiming to attract investors who might be loath to shift their dealing activity to the internet. But an automated phone service should be almost as cheap to run for the broker as a website.

The vital doubt is whether they will work properly. If you're trying to place a quick trade on a volatile share, the last thing you will want to be doing is repeating the name of the stock into the phone handset in a variety of regional accents, hoping desperately that the recognition software will eventually understand. However, the Sharepeople service launched in the summer augurs well.

Advice

Not all online brokers are so internet and automation mad that they will forego expanding their offline services. Schwab, for example, is keen to replicate its US network of advisory share dealing centres in the UK.

Advice is likely to be available from online brokers through other routes, too. Already some online start-ups are adding telephone-based advisory services to their no-advice internet dealing operation, with fees for the advice passed on either through higher commissions or premium rate call charges.

The technology that will allow advice to be given via a broker's website is also close to adoption. But until a broadband phone line is a standard way to link to the internet, and hardware is routinely equipped with microphones and web cameras, the telephone will remain the route for advice.

Online generic information will be made interactive, too, with interviews with analysts available on video clips, for example. Education will be extended with customer seminars.

Technical support

The same is true of technical support services - online brokers, like online banks, are realising that pure internet thinking does not go down well. As long as online services go wrong, investors will feel isolated without telephone support. Free, 24-hour phone support will probably become the standard, with established brokers forced by new entrants to improve the quality and hours of their services.

Margin trading

Borrowing money from your broker to gear up your trades has been commonplace in the US for many years. But it is a controversial strategy. The severity of the 1929 Wall Street crash is often blamed on the weight of borrowed money in the market.

Margin trading has taken its time to come to the UK. Although full-service discretionary brokers - which manage the portfolios of hands-off wealthy clients - may offer margin facilities, the service has not filtered down to the mass market yet. However, several of the North American brokers - notably TD Waterhouse - are promising an online margin facility within the next few months.

Access to foreign shares

Although rare at the moment, most of the online brokers are promising soon to offer trading in US and European shares from your sterling trading account and at the same commission rates as UK deals.

New internet channels

Commentators disagree about how people will come to use the internet. Many think home access will change dramatically. It will soon seem quaint to pop into the study, switch on the PC and go surfing, they say, because television sets and mobile phones will be tomorrow's channels for internet access.

Several brokers are keen to get an early start developing services on the new internet access channels - Wap mobile phones and interactive digital television (IDTV).

Mybroker and TD Waterhouse have Wap pricing and dealing services up and running already, and Waterhouse is in the throes of launching dealing operations via IDTV.Interactive Investor International - relay prices on Wap, too). Wap will also normally incur cheaper commissions (at the normal online rate) than voice dealing.

Share dealing via IDTV is part of the brokers' strategy to open up the online market to those 11m inactive shareholders - people who still hold BT privatisation shares but have perhaps never traded a share in their lives and may not have internet access either. Having a share dealing service accessible from the sofa could democratise the market and eliminate many people's fear of stockbrokers and of and of the internet in one swoop.