Bernard Ghillebaert (born 17 January 1952) is a French telecommunications engineer and businessman, and former Chief Executive of Orange UK.
He went to the École Polytechnique et de Télécom in Paris, and the Centre National d'Études des Télécommunications.
Mobitex, a Public Access Mobile Radio network standard had been conceived in 1981, and put into operation in the mid-1980s.
In a meeting in late October 1984, the French part of the DF900 project submitted a proposal for the provision of an enhanced paging service, with diffusion of alphanumeric messages to mobile users with acknowledgment capabilities.
On 12 November 1984 at a meeting in London, this proposal became simply the transmission of short alphanumeric messages with acknowledgement capabilities.