Talked to my sister, this afternoon.
She kept getting a recording (when she would call Comcast) saying that there was an outage in her area and they were working to fix it, then today she didn't get the recording. Comcast tech support told her that it was a planned outage for a software upgrade. They explained that customers could be expected to have the problems that I was seeing yesterday (explains why my internet and phone were messed up, but are now fine). She explained that their update and "planned outage" (that they didn't bother to tell customers about) had completely shut her internet off for several days.
They tried a few things, then told her that her modem wouldn't work with the new software (modem rented from them, not owned by her) and that she would have to take it to their store and exchange it for a new one. She flipped out on them and chewed them out. I really hope they weren't stupid enough to try to bullshit her about the software issue, since she got started in software when computers still used punch cards and retired a few years ago (plenty of experience with software, systems analysis, tech support, teaching classes for users of the software, etc).
An hour later, with no further calls from her, they somehow had her outdated (two years old) modem working just fine with the new software.