I suspect that this had more to do with marketing on Pearson's part than anything else -- the officials who made these decisions probably had not paid attention

I suspect that this had more to do with marketing on Pearson's part than anything else -- the officials who made these decisions probably had not paid attention to the fine print about broadband connection requirements. They were probably looking only at the cost per-book or per-student (and it never occurred to them that this makes no sense when talking about computers, since books should be something that computers can rapidly copy) and were dazzled by fancy interactive features. At least that is how things seem to work at the university level. Maybe things are different at a local school district.