Medivet Veterinary Group, which has 27 surgeries across London, recently got ADSL high-speed internet from BT.

It found that the technology proved invaluable when one patient, a dog called Henri Connor, needed an operation on a fractured elbow after he was trodden on by a horse.

"The vet was in the middle of a complex operation and needed specialist help from a vet in another practice," explained Medivet's Director Arnold Levy.

Henri: Little to say about ADSL

"It was more useful to take digital pictures of each stage of the operation and send them down the network to the specialist," he said.

"This gave the specialist detailed information that would have been impossible to describe on the phone," he said.

As a result, the operation on Henri was a complete success.

Fur factor

The surgery now plans to install webcams in all its operating theatres so that difficult operations can be monitored in real-time throughout the group.

It is not the first time the fur factor has proved a big hit for broadband.

Frank the cat became an overnight celebrity when a website monitoring his progress after a road accident went online earlier this year.

Millions of visitors logged on to check how Frank was doing.

Frank is now fully recovered but a chatroom, dedicated to the moggy, is still uniting cat lovers around the world.