Blood lines drew Equant head into telecom field

Andrew Bond-Webster, the new president of Equant Pacific, may not be a direct descendant of telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell, but he can lay claim to having telecommunications in his blood.

Mr Bond-Webster's maternal grandfather installed Madrid's first telephone exchange in the 1920s while his paternal grandfather served as deputy to British administrator Lord Reith, former chair of the Commonwealth Communications Board.

'I think telecom went from one generation to another,' he said with a chuckle. But while the business may be in his blood, it was not foremost in his mind when he started his career.

Mr Bond-Webster, who studied business in college, said he got into the industry 'by accident'. He was encouraged by friends to apply for a sales job at British Telecom after finishing college.

He started by selling electronic mail to businesses in 1985 for BT, although at that time, no one had guessed how widespread it would later become.

'They saw it as a replacement for telex,' Mr Bond-Webster recalled. 'I had little apprehension of where the industry was going to go. I was too busy selling.' He later worked for International Network Services in Britain before joining Equant - then known as Scitor - in 1990.