Commercials on tv have gotten ridiculous

[hunter]

21. The airwaves belong to the people. Maybe we should shut down commercial broadcast television.

It's obsolete.

We could incorporate this freed up bandwidth into a system of universal internet access. Television bands might be useful for internet access in rural areas.

My wife's parents live in a rural mountain valley and cannot receive any broadcast television. They have a satellite dish for television. For internet service they rely on a cell phone tower on a mountain top several miles away.

Satellite television and cell phone data plans are not a negligible expense for retired people living on a fixed incomes like my wife's parents. They are an impossible expense for many others with very limited incomes.

I don't think the U.S.A. would go broke subsidizing a universal internet service capable of delivering 480p video to everyone.

Personally, my wife and I quit traditional television more than a decade ago -- there's no cable, no satellite, no broadcast television in our home. We don't see any commercials. We have DSL internet and an $8.99 Netflix subscription. We rent movies from our neighborhood Redbox. So far we haven't run out of stuff to watch.

Many years ago the U.S.A. managed to bring electric and phone service to rural areas throughout the nation. Many roads and highways were built. Providing universal internet service would be a much less challenging task.