Also worked in the industry, or at least industry related - I worked in the cable industry - but our corp did cell phones and cable modems, FIOS, etc... .. I suspect the person meant the modem that the 'land line' used for VOIP was an older 3g modem. None of the ISPs are good about upgrading the equipment when it's out of date.... they wait till a complaint comes in.
My son and a friend used to volunteer tech support at a retirement community that my step mom lived in. They boys were in middle school and early high school. A lot of their questions had to do with cell phones and some cable modem issues. (In addition to helping change printer ink, loading various drives for printers, etec.) The residents were about 1/2 tech savvy with really obscure tech questions that the boys would have to research - and the other half, the non tech savvy half, my son and his buddies talked into switching to jitterbug phones. Often an adult child of the resident would come in - understand the issue, and facilitate changing technology to something simpler. It was great experience for the boys. Even my step mom, who I put in the tech savvy bunch since she was still teaching online nursing statistics classes, started having more issues with technology as she got further into her late 80's.
I guess my point is technology gets harder as we get older. Terms change (server based is now 'cloud' for example), technology changes (3g cdma, vs 5g) And the folks at verizon and other companies don't hire the best/brightest for the call centers... that tends to be a minimum wage job.