I've been a Professional Engineer for 38 years. I called someone I know that work more closely with NETGEAR. Name here will not be told.
Since COX tested and proved that the signals into the cable modem were just fine, this individual told me to do a FACTORY RESET of the modem. That sometimes the forced firmware update from the ISP can hang the modem, and, just doing a reboot with some firmware updates are not good enough. Or that the update did not take. Upon doing the FACTORY RESET, the C7000 performance returned after an extended reboot time.
This individual's advise was correct, it fixed the problem.
It was a GLITCH in the updating of the FIRMWARE of the C7000. The proper firmware is displayed now for my ISP and it's working to my paid account speed specifications.
