The largest cinema group in Ireland has criticised the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) for refusing to allow cinemas install mobile phone interceptors.
Cinemas are entitled only to install this technology, which would block all calls except emergency calls, only with the consent of the mobile phone companies, ComReg has decreed.
The Ward Anderson group, which owns more than half of the cinemas in the country, said it had been unable to reach a universal agreement with mobile phone companies to install this technology. “They’re not interested in blocking their own signals,” director of operations for the group Mark Anderson told the Irish Independent.
Anderson installed a mobile phone signal blocker at the group’s flagship Savoy Cinema on O’Connell Street in Dublin in 2004 but had to remove it after ComReg said the move was illegal.
By Niall Byrne
