Hyperlobby is just a ghost town...

[Snake]

These days the European Football Championship is on going, so this might be a good explanation why HL is so ...empty.
On the other hand, I fly online using HL for almost 3 years and I can say during summer time, at least on European time, you'll not find too many players. In the winter time, in the evening, there are much more.
Looks like russian servers or russian players are more active, so I suggest you install Xfire and select as your favourites the busiest servers. There are 4 or 5 servers where you can find at least 20 players each almost any time of the day.