Broadband Without Computers Is Like Schools Without Books
More than 1,300 people logged in. Just under 50 of us had the opportunity to speak.
I was grateful to be one of them.
The question before us was how to spend the remaining $21 billion under the federal Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program. Assistant Secretary Arielle Roth emphasized NTIA’s responsibility to be a careful steward of taxpayer dollars and to ensure that any use of the savings produces “real measurable value.”
As I listened to proposals about expanding 5G service in rural dead zones, strengthening middle-mile infrastructure, investing in Internet Exchange Points, and modernizing Next Generation 911 systems, I kept returning to one simple truth from my work on the ground:
Broadband without computers is like schools without books.
We can build the infrastructure. We can wire communities. We can strengthen national networks.
But if households do not have computers — and do not have the skills to use high-speed internet — they cannot participate in the digital economy.
When it was Can Code Communities’ Founder and CEO, Annmarie Lanesey’s turn to speak, this was her testimony:
“Good afternoon. My name is Annmarie Lanesey, and I am the Founder and CEO of a digital skills training program called Can Code Communities. We are a workforce development organization serving New York and Massachusetts, with a pilot program in Selma, Alabama and with trainees from 10 states.
We were founded as Albany Can Code with a mission to create a more tech-literate ecosystem in Albany, New York, and quickly expanded throughout New York and Massachusetts, with trainees from 10 states. Our work is focused on upward economic mobility through digital skills training and workforce development programs for adults.
I want to share a story of one of our trainees, an unemployed military veteran who had been out of the workforce for eight years when he attended our program. He enrolled in our training and was doing incredibly well—until his laptop broke and stopped attending classes. When we reached out to ask why he stopped coming to class, he told us he couldn’t continue because he no longer had a working computer.
That moment inspired our first ever laptop loaner program. Today, we don’t loan devices—we give computers and hotspot internet access to participants who need them.
He completed the training and landed his first job, after eight years of unemployment, with a globally recognized technology company, earning nearly $50,000. I saw him four years later—and he gave me a hug and said, ‘Annmarie, I’m now making over $100,000 dollars.’
This is just one story of the life-changing economic impact of digital skills training programs like ours. Upward economic mobility through digital skills training is real—and can change the entire trajectory of a person’s life.
I encourage NTIA to use remaining BEAD funding to support digital skills training and computer access for our communities. Broadband infrastructure alone means nothing, if people don’t have the skills and computers to use it.”
That remains true.
In our work, we see clearly that participation in the digital economy requires three things:
• Reliable broadband
• A computer in the home
• The digital skills to use both effectively
Remove one, and opportunity disappears.
And we must remember:
People cannot hunger for the internet if they have never used it.
If someone has never experienced online learning, telehealth, remote work, AI tools, or digital entrepreneurship, they may not know what is possible. The absence of demand is not proof of sufficiency — it is often evidence of exclusion.
I was honored to be one of roughly 50 voices in a room of 1,300 listening participants. This is a pivotal moment in national broadband policy. The decision before us is not simply how to spend surplus funds.
It is whether we define success by miles of fiber — or by lives transformed.
Because broadband without computers is like schools without books.
And if we stop at infrastructure, we are not building opportunity — we are building empty classrooms in a digital economy that is moving forward without the very people these programs were meant to serve.