AN ORDER preventing a television deflector operator maintaining a service to 2,500 households in Kilkenny, Waterford and Wexford was granted to Cablelink by the High Court yesterday.
The interlocutory injunction against Mr Michael Keane, Ballintarsney, Mooncoin, Co Kilkenny, continues until the hearing.
Mr Michael Collins SC, for Cablelink Limited, told Miss Just ice Laffoy that undertakings had been given by two other defendants, Mr Thomas Hartley and Ms Kathleen Hartley, Ballinclare, Glenmore, Co Kilkenny, to stop retransmitting television signals from an aerial mast on their lands.
Ms Justice Laffoy said she was satisfied there was a fair question to be tried and that the balance of convenience lay in granting the interlocutory injunction.
Cablelink's company secretary, Mr Patrick Glennon, in an affidavit, said the company was the sole licensee authorised by the Minister for Communications in 1994 to relay television signals by MMDS in the southeast.
Mr Glennon said Cablelink had spent £1 million developing the MMDS system in the area, which included part of Wexford and Waterford, as well as south Kilkenny. The company intended spending £600,000 per annum in further development, depending on subscriber growth.
He claimed that an unlicensed retransmission service had been in operation for a number of years at Ballinclare and was received by people who had aerials erected.
It was possible, he said, for members of the public in surrounding areas to receive multi channel television by erecting a UHF aerial for £80. He believed there was a minimum of 2,500 households receiving this deflector service.
The unlicensed broadcasters were breaking the law, damaging Cablelink's business and hindering the development of the company's MMDS system, Mr Glennon claimed.