When can I JUST use TM internet modem as ONLY a modem, in BRIDGE mode, with NO NAT, NO firewall, and frankly NO Wifi.

I've done the research now, and have concluded that this is definitely not ready for prime time.  Not only that, but I've concluded that TM is sadly only going to cater to low end users.  IF TM is going to go after networking and the ISP market, then it will fail unless it is also fully supports the "business office environment".  Where is that located today??  Most employees' offices are no longer in an office building.  Call their office, and you'll find that it is really located in their home, and not down a long hallway.

Call most business's main office number, and instead of a PBX, you will most often reach that person's cell phone-- their PERSONAL cell phone.  Businesses are moving most all their workers to work offsite, and much of that "branch office", is really at the employee's home. or where ever they happen to be at that time.  So, if our cell phones are now acting in the role of the extension at my office, it is ALSO my business phone. 

What about the "company LAN" or our shared apps, shared data, and security?  That too is being replaced in teh cloud so it will increasingly not matter, where the physical office is located.  Google WorkSpace which we use as a small company, is also now scaled up to handle thousands of employees.  So, now our "company network" is not behind a firewall as it was years ago.  The engineers at Google really do know what they are doing for enterprise customers.  We had to migrate our "network instance" to a large company, and that only took our IT staffs an hour, with Google's help to implement the transfer.

Recently, I had to work with troubleshooting significant problems with a 5 year old ARRIS cable modem, remotely from 100 miles away.  THIS IS a "consumer product", and I'm going to reverse my stance and say that most all vendors that are providing services for consumers and companies ARE providing FULLY ALL the features for both styles of customers.  It's the only strategy that makes sense.  And, instead of less capabilities, there are significantly more options and capabilities in all the new modems.  They are all ready and capable, and designed specifically so the identical hardware can front end a $20,000 Cisco router, or my XBox and Roku.  And in today's market, TM is planning on eliminating "business use"??  Most homes ARE GOING to be all types -- SOHO, SMB and enterprise offices, as well as homes.  Those that are not, will become fewer and fewer.  

Even though this ARRIS device I was troubleshooting appeared to be defective, from the consumer's side I was able to use their PC to configure more than most commercial routers, and this was as it designed over five years ago.  Likewise, many of the detailed logs are available to the users and even more detailed logs and configurations are available to Spectrum, remotely.  I found their support engineers, and we could both work on that device together, remotely.  We both could see that in the past week, this was going on and offline about every two minutes.  We also determined that the problem was likely the wiring, and not the modem.  No guessing in the dark, the on-site techs had to rewire a fair amount of connectors, both inside and outside the house.  Then, perfect internet

At this point, I really can't justify wasting my time redoing things another way, just because TM is too stubborn to provide a device that could be used in business OR home use.  You can always hide features, but you sure can't add them if they don't exist.   ADD PASS THROUGH and BRIDGE MODE!

I have a number of calls from the "business reps" at TM.  Here's some of the things I will report:  When providing a new service or new hardware, you are choosing to not only cripple the devices as you've done with the modem, but you've also chosen to not even allow pass-through to work.  That means that your new devices and services are specifically designed so that they can't possibly work in a business environment.  Even your old obsolete "Cell Spot Wifi Router" designed by NetGear, had bridge mode where I could use it as a pass through, or as a Wifi dumb target within a LAN, (which I am still doing today).  You can easily add a UI "dumb mode" for users that might cause more service config problems, and that will keep it simple for them, while providing an advanced mode for regular users. 

I'd also talk to them about TM's DIGITS initiative.  It too, seems like it had a great start to provide a means for a SOHO business with a cloud based Mini-PBX.  Instead, it appears the product was abandoned… Not only is there no further development, even what they did release, cannot be used.  The Android app hasn't had an update in years--That said, the app actually stays logged in and mostly works, although synchronization between the app and the phones doesn't work reliably.  PC's --- Both the installed DIGITS app, and the web based version of Digits is a joke.  Both log out after 20 minutes, and can only be logged back in with a new text message code, sent to your regular cell phone.  Whoops…  To me, these are rather glaring problems that won't ever be solved and brought up to business standards.  

I was really bullish on TM providing inexpensive ISP services.  but someone that is a strategist must get involved or TM will fail, and us users with them.  I'll have to stay with Spectrum for now, even if it costs more $$.  Overall with my time, it is a much better and less costly.