Can ISP’s really flash firmware to a 3rd party router? That’s wild. I’m not sure that’s happened to me before, and I’ve been forced to use Comcast/xfinity my whole adult life. I’ve had multiple Arris modems, and whenever I check their status page, it was always Arris branded, and stayed the same before and after hooking it up and registering it with the ISP.
I always assumed the rigamarole of registering a personal modem was simply a white listing process (give MAC address, receive internet). I’ll have to look more into it, I didn’t know there was anything else going on.
I had to refresh a pc with Windows 11 recently (unfortunately) and I can confirm it works, but I found it only works on a completely clean install, and you have to run the command IMMEDIATELY when starting setup. I had to re-install twice, because the first time I connected to Wi-Fi, and even running the command and disabling wifi, it still demanded an account. I had to wipe the drive an install a second time, then run the command right at the start of the setup process, before doing anything. THEN it let me skip connecting to internet and logging into an account.