I worked for Cox when I lived in AZ. I worked in their "SOC" (system operation center) where we monitored the big picture for AZ, Las Vegas and San Diego, the room I worked in looked like every depiction of the NORAD Command Center or NASA Mission Control you've ever seen in the movies.
We knew everything that was happening on the network and we relayed that information to the call center folks - who were instructed NOT to tell the consumers what the problem was.
Sad sidebar. Internally, customers weren't referred to as "customers", they were "RGU-X" - REVENUE GENERATING UNITS. The "X" indicated how many billable services you had. "The outage affected 5,464 RGUs".
Anyway, the SOC didn't care if an individuals services were down, we cared about the services on the entire street. If three or more neighbors went offline we got an alarm. And the controls and tools were so granular we could see the history of up/down time of your house, the levels from your equipment, the levels of everyone on your tap, the levels of everyone on your street, and the levels/history of the node that feeds your area. We could tell that your phone had been up for 37 days, your TV converter had been up for 60 days, and your internet modem had dropped offline 10 minutes ago with a high SNR that showed up 6 days ago after a brief period of being offline - indicating the customer had changed something, like adding a cheap splitter to put another TV in the same room.
If the problem is widespread, say the quam is misaligned or there's been a fiber cut (happens a LOT), we knew that too - and so do the folks who answer the phones. But they're not going to admit that to you. Their performance is judged based on turn and burn, handling the most calls - NOT problem resolution. If you're lucky you'll get the automated message that there's an outage in your area. In nearly every cable company, the call center is the bottom entry level rung of the company. New hires get a crash course in basic troubleshooting (unplug the modem and router, check levels) and are turned loose without any real understanding of how the system works. If they stick to the script they can solve about 50% of the issues they're presented with.
Rather than actually say the problem is on their end, it's easier to schedule a truck-roll for a week or more out, then once the issue is cleared up, cancel the truck-roll.
Things to ask when you have to call:
Can you view the SNR history of my modem? Do you see anything that would indicate an ongoing issue?
Can you view the SNR history of other people on my street? Do you see anything that would indicate an ongoing issue?
Is the node showing over utilization (over saturation)?
99% of the time the problem is NOT your equipment (modem/router), pc maybe, drop maybe, splitter maybe, but not the stuff the call center rep will be focused on.
While we're on the subject, all cable outlets are not created equal. To ensure the best possible signal levels find the cable where it comes into the house, attach a 2-way splitter, feed your ONLY your cable modem from one leg, feed the rest of the house from the other leg. The image below shows a 3-way, but if you look at the schematic it's actually a 2-way feeding another 2-way.
