I want to solve the age-old (decades-old) question of how to bork or severely restrict wireless (radio, WiFi, satellite, cell phones, etc.) communication (semaphore is allowed, I guess, but it's not going to become incredibly useful). Because, you know, plot contrivance. Wired communication (telephone, internet, etc.) should still work. One traditional answer is to set your plot before the invention of ________, but I want a modern world with YouTube and Netflix and JNCO jeans and drastically changed seafaring/flying.
My solution is that most of the Radio Spectrum (let's say from VLF to EHF) after some event(s) has so much noise that producing intelligible signals—even after utilizing signal processing techniques—is so inefficient as to render such communication all but nonexistent.
Nobody is investing in massive shields that protect entire cities. NASA or Google or whoever may have the odd building they've designed to allow the continued use of ________, but for 99.9999% of people it's all gone.
The setting is modern (20X0s) Earth ten to twenty years after whatever event(s) caused this change. The world is still functional, albeit changed (the setting is not apocalyptic). There is no magic.
Why/how did this happen? Are there any other consequences?
Answers don't need to be "hard-science", but a link or two would be nice.
Ideally, beyond the impact on wireless communication, the event(s) shouldn't be too paradigm-shifting (a solution that would seem too drastic: a cup of neutron star matter has apocalypsed part of the world and is emitting massive amounts of RF waves).